THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 JS7. H. PIERSON.
 
 IN "GOD S 
 COUNTRY 
 
 Bv 
 
 HIGBEE 
 
 Wtih an Introduction t>v 
 HENRY WATTERSON 
 
 And notes on the plav & & 
 "A SOUTHERN ROMANCE" 
 
 Bv 
 
 B. B. VALLENTINE 
 
 New York 
 
 AMERICAN PUBLISHERS 
 CORPORATION 
 310-315 Slxm Avenue
 
 Copyright iSSq, ty 
 Belford Company. 
 
 Copyright, 1897, 
 
 by 
 American Publisher* Corporation.
 
 PS 
 
 NOTES ON THE PLAY 
 
 "A SOUTHERN ROMANCE. 
 
 It is a matter of surprise that few who 
 
 enjoyed In God s Country" saw its dramatic 
 * 
 
 possibilities, even after reading Mr. Henry 
 
 Watterson s brilliant introduction to the story. 
 Anyone accustomed to write for the stage 
 would certainly recognize in the book dramatic 
 situations, but was there sufficient material to 
 
 Q 
 
 make a play for a whole evening s entertain 
 ment? 
 
 _^ The characters in the story are drawn in a 
 
 way that shows the touch of genius. Their 
 obvious truth to life is convincing, but the 
 
 CO incidents, though strong, are mere episodes and 
 unpromising for the construction and the weav 
 ing of a consistent and properly-developed plot. 
 The passage that suggested the dramati 
 zation is in Mr. Watterson s preface, It says, 
 
 i 
 
 449646
 
 Notes on the Play. 
 
 " The plot interest turns upon the develop 
 ment of the heart interest." The overwhelm 
 ing heart interest brought out in so masterly 
 a manner made the dramatization possible, and 
 the story " In God s Country " is now familiar 
 to playgoers throughout the country as " A 
 Southern Romance." 
 
 New characters had necessarily to be created, 
 new situations to be devised, and the ending to 
 be a happy one in order to make a drama of 
 " In God s Country." It was found also that 
 the Tramp would be more effective on the 
 stage as a Frenchman than as a German. 
 
 There is always a tendency on the part of 
 American audiences to laugh at Germans on 
 the stage, the comic Teuton in vaudeville and 
 farce-comedy with his broken English having 
 almost destroyed the possibility of the stage 
 " Dutchman s " being taken seriously, no mat 
 ter in what guise he appears. 
 
 The opening performance took place at the 
 Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, in the pres 
 ence of a large audience, Saturday evening, 
 September 4th, 1897,
 
 Notes on the Play. iii 
 
 Fifth Avenue Theatre. 
 A SOUTHERN ROMANCE, 
 
 A drama in three acts by B. B. Vallentine, 
 
 founded on Dolly Higbee s novel, 
 
 "In God s Country." 
 
 Several changes in the original cast were 
 found advisable, and the company now pre 
 senting the play is as follows : 
 
 CAST. 
 
 Lydia Ransome, - - Miss Beryl Hope 
 Emily Wyckoff, from New York City, 
 
 Miss Cora Tinnie 
 
 Meriky, - Miss Emma Brennan 
 
 Andre, Mr. Emmett Corrigan 
 
 Bourdin, - - - - Mr. E. A. White 
 Colonel Wyckoff Ransome, 
 
 Mr. John W. Thompson 
 
 Beverly Johnson, - - Mr. Franklyn Hill 
 Claude Groves, - - Mr. Edward Wade 
 Elic, } | Negro boys 1 f Mr. Thomas H. Ince 
 Mose, r "j on r ! Mr. Henry Tanes 
 Gabe, J I the farm, J I Mr. Frederick Day 
 
 Time The Present,
 
 Notes on the Play. 
 
 The action takes place on Colonel Ransome s 
 farm, near Lexington, Kentucky. 
 
 Act I. Recognition. 
 
 Act 1 1. -Flight. 
 
 Act III. Forgiveness. 
 
 The critical notices in the New York news 
 papers were in most cases favorable. 
 
 New York World : " The Fifth Avenue opens 
 with a great artistic success. . . The audience 
 liked the play for the story it told, the manner 
 in which it was developed and the charming 
 local color and atmosphere it possessed. . . The 
 author has certainly preserved all its charm ; he 
 has brought out the full value of the characters 
 and he has couched the language of Miss Hig- 
 bee s creations in dialogue that is natural and 
 effective. . . Since Alabama the local stage 
 has seen nothing more poetical and graceful 
 than the opening act of this new play. . . As a 
 purely natural story full of human interest, a 
 true transcript from life, fraught with a fine 
 romantic and sympathetic strain, A Southern 
 Romance should realize all that its projectors
 
 Notes on the Play. 
 
 hope to accomplish. . . A Southern Romance 
 is the first genuine artistic hit of the season." 
 
 New York Herald : " In these days of re 
 action from the problem drama the realistic 
 jaded theatre-goers find pleasure in the unfold 
 ing of a simple story of romantic love. A 
 Southern Romance is of this type. . . The stage 
 setting is attractive and the plot is limpid as a 
 mountain stream. . . A Southern Romance 
 will prove an attractive entertainment." 
 
 The Sun says : " There is a charm of nat 
 uralness in A Southern Romance. . . The story 
 that it tells is sweet and simple. It was pleas 
 ant reading in the book and Mr. Vallentine 
 preserved its merits very well in transferring it 
 to the stage." 
 
 New York Press : " New play makes a hit ! 
 In A Southern Romance are all the elements 
 of success. It is a delightful drama, full of 
 heart interest, with plenty of situations and 
 thrilling incidents. . . The reception accorded to 
 the play last evening was enthusiastic. . . A 
 Southern Romance bids fair to meet with as 
 much success as Alabama. " 
 
 " Alan Pale," in New York Journal : " The
 
 vi Notes on the Play. 
 
 atmosphere of A Southern Romance is singu 
 larly quiet and comforting." 
 
 New York Times : " Its love story is told in a 
 sympathetic and touching way." 
 
 New York Daily News : " The play met with 
 a cordial reception from the public." 
 
 Mail and Express : " This new piece is 
 worthy the patronage of the intelligent theatre 
 goer and will probably get it. . . A Southern 
 Romance palpably succeeds. . . There is in 
 the output a rationality of dialogue, a seeming 
 spontaneity of sentiment and well-contrived 
 suspense, frequently turned to trepidation that 
 gives it exceptional distinction and charm." 
 
 Evening Sun : " The first act of A South 
 ern Romance is as simple and direct a piece 
 of stagecraft as has been seen in many a long 
 day. It unfolds the story in a charming man 
 ner and ends with a climax which is striking 
 and unusual." 
 
 New York Evening Journal : " The piece is 
 the work of Mr. B. B. Vallentine, who was the 
 editor of Puck and was widely known as the 
 author of the Fitznoodle Papers, which were 
 a feature of comic journalism fifteen years ago.
 
 Notes on the Play. vii 
 
 The playwright has not adhered with absolute 
 fidelity to the lines of the story. The play has 
 a happier ending than in the book." 
 
 The Spirit of the Times : " The new play was 
 favorably received by a distinctly Southern 
 audience. . . The Colonel with his shotgun 
 marching back by Lydia s side is a striking, 
 dramatic picture. . . The Southern atmosphere 
 of the romance has been carefully preserved 
 by Mr. Vallentine s experienced skill. . . The 
 scenery, by Josef Physioc, is admirable. . . A 
 pretty play beautifully staged is the verdict 
 upon A Southern Romance. " 
 
 The Daily Telegraph speaks of it as "An 
 exceeding charming play." 
 
 New York Mirror : " The play is clear, 
 straightforward and well told." 
 
 New York Criterion (Percival Pollard) : " This 
 play has the one, the unique, the desirable 
 quality ; it goes straight to the heart. This 
 play gives you the South ; it gives you romance ; 
 it gives you tears, and it gives you joy ; and 
 over it all there is the infinitely restful quality of 
 genuineness. . . When a play pleases the eye 
 and the ear and keeps your emotions surging in
 
 viii Notes on the Play. 
 
 channels that have nothing of regret in them, I 
 think that play has served its purpose. . . It is a 
 play that touches all that is best in one. Yes, it 
 is like a garden of tender magnolias, is this play." 
 
 New York Home Journal : " The coloring is 
 pleasant, atmospheric effect faithful, composition 
 excellent and handling effective. . . The play is 
 very well written, the dialogue being easy and 
 the diction choice. Mr. Vallentine is a literary 
 man and a skilled playwright. His services have 
 done the utmost possible for the play. . . It is 
 well mounted at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, 
 admirably acted, too ; in fact, a better company 
 is seldom seen outside of the Frohman and 
 Daly stock companies ; all are convincing." 
 
 Less favorable notices dwelt on minor points 
 but the consensus of press opinion from the 
 foregoing extracts establishes the fact that " A 
 Southern Romance " is an unquestionable 
 success. 
 
 B. B. VALLENTINE. 
 
 American Dramatists Clut, 
 New York) October ajd, t&fl.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 THIS tragic story of " the dark and 
 bloody ground " made a deep impression 
 when it appeared as a completed novelette 
 in Belford s Magazine ; and, in its present 
 form, it is believed that it will receive, 
 as it deserves to receive, a wider and more 
 serious attention than is commonly be 
 stowed upon our ever-multiplying stock 
 of literary effusions. 
 
 It is a romance of Kentucky, racy of 
 the soil, redolent of the barn-yard and 
 the stable, rich with the tints of bluegrass 
 in the landscape, yet so subtile in struct 
 ure, and so filled with the spirit of tragedy, 
 as to rise above the latter-day common- 
 5
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 place of our uninspired life into the atmos 
 phere of the idyllic, and to be at one and 
 the same time a current chronicle, an an 
 tique and a classic. 
 
 What but the vision of true genius could 
 see success in a task so original and dar 
 ing as the creation of a throbbing heart- 
 interest out of materials so simple, so 
 slight, and so trite ? and whose but the hand 
 of an artist could have given to this task 
 execution so powerful and brilliant ? 
 
 " In God s Country " is the plain and 
 circumstantial narrative of a woman s 
 struggle with that great passion which has 
 wrecked and brightened so many lives. 
 It is the old, old story of love and pride. 
 There are but four characters : a country 
 girl, of the average sort ; her father, a 
 country gentleman of the average sort ; a 
 horsy lover, of the average sort ; and a
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 tramp, very far indeed from the average 
 sort. The plot-interest turns upon the de 
 velopment of the heart-interest. There is 
 no striving here for effect. The lights and 
 shadows are furnished by the idiosyncra 
 sies of a situation purely local and natural. 
 Into the tranquil existence of a well-bred 
 but motherless girl, living alone with her 
 father, and the head of his establishment, 
 and betrothed, as a kind of matter-of- 
 course, to a young man with whom she has 
 grown to womanhood her own and her 
 father s choice there comes a spell 
 against which she is wholly unable to con 
 tend, and beneath whose enchanting death- 
 strokes she ultimately falls. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive how the sore 
 travail of Lydia Ransome could have ha* 
 any other ending. It is the misfortune of 
 women in positions such as hers the not
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 uncommon position of an internal battivi 
 between conflicting sentiments of honor, 
 duty, and affection that, unequal in point 
 of intellectual strength to meet the inces 
 sant drain upon their nervous energies, 
 and to think clearly, they are also unsup 
 ported by the wisdom of worldly experi 
 ence, and are dashed upon the rocks of 
 conventional usage often irrelevant to the 
 actual issue involved by the waves of 
 their own emotion, which, unlike the tides 
 of the ocean, are controlled by no law 
 except that which superstition and passion 
 make unto themselves. A wicked woman 
 in Lydia s place would have known pre 
 cisely what to do. A good woman, with a 
 sufficiency of moral courage and knowl 
 edge of life, would have been equally sure 
 of her course. But there is a woman be 
 tween the two. not bad enough to be a
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 schemer, not strong enough to be a hero 
 ine truly feminine and lovely who, when 
 left alone upon the sea of human passion, 
 is as a frail boat tossed by every wind. Of 
 this type was Lydia Ransome ; having a 
 noble, aspiring nature ; perceptions and 
 susceptibilities divinely born ; of ready per 
 sonal courage and social tact ; but half- 
 made upon the spiritual side, and a slave 
 to the abridgments and prejudices of the 
 provincial code under which her lot had 
 been cast. There was nothing for it but 
 anguish, despair, and death. She could 
 not rise high enough, nor sink low enough, 
 to escape. How she fell, like a martyr, if 
 not like a heroine, is told with a power rare 
 to modern fiction ; and the lesson that 
 issues thence, sweet as the flowers that 
 sprang from her grave, is full of a wo 
 man s appeal and protest against the
 
 io Prefatory Note. 
 
 limitations with which custom hedges her 
 about, whilst giving the man remission 
 and license. 
 
 Of the male characters little need be 
 said. Colonel Ransome, the father, is a 
 good type of the country gentleman of 
 Central Kentucky, well-drawn and not ex 
 aggerated. Horrible as the final catas 
 trophe is, it is possible. The two other 
 males, the horsy lover and the weird 
 tramp, are mere shadows ; the identity of 
 the tramp arousing the suspicion of the 
 reader from the opening episode of Schu 
 bert s Serenade, and entirely revealing it 
 self in that superb dramatic climax, which 
 makes a new world for Lydia, and fills it 
 with the music of the spheres. The clos 
 ing chapters are breezy with action and 
 of breathless interest ; and the finale is 
 reached with the abrupt force of intense
 
 Prefatory Note. 
 
 feeling, but without the sacrifice of artistic 
 finish. 
 
 I venture to say thus much of this story 
 because of its merits, intrinsically consid 
 ered, and because of the promise it gives 
 of a new and original presence in a field 
 where, at its best, mere photography seems 
 to have taken the place of the pencil and 
 the pen, and cultivated mediocrity rules 
 supreme. " In God s Country, " is a 
 bucket out of the well of human passion, 
 sympathy, and love, from which Georges 
 Sand and George Eliot brought forth such 
 copious draughts, giving us assurance that 
 the waters there have not gone dry. Let 
 us hope that, in the personality of " D. 
 Higbee," this assurance will be fully real 
 ized. 
 
 HENRY WATTERSON, 
 
 Courier-Journal of Jan. 3, 1890.
 
 IN "GOD S COUNTRY." 
 
 i. 
 
 IT was an afternoon in early spring, 
 sunny and soft, but a trifle cool in the 
 shade. The air was heavy with the odor 
 of locust-blooms that met in a long, snowy 
 arch over the smooth, white turnpike, and 
 the grassy margin on either side the high 
 way was dotted with wild violets, blue and 
 white. The road traversed the region 
 known as Central Kentucky, and on each 
 side of it, now level, now rolling, stretched 
 the fertile uplands of the " Bluegrass." In 
 every direction the eye encountered an 
 13
 
 14 In " God s Country." 
 
 attenuated line of darker green that 
 marked the capricious winding and doub 
 ling of the Elkhorn, which spread itself 
 over the landscape like loops of a tangled 
 skein. 
 
 Along this flowery, fragrant highway a 
 man walked slowly, wearily. He wore a 
 wide-brimmed slouch hat that almost con 
 cealed his face, and carried a queer knap 
 sack strapped upon his back, which, like 
 the rest of his belongings, was thickly 
 coated with the fine white dust of the 
 " pike." His clothes were not so new, nor 
 so exact in their correspondence to the 
 length and breadth of his figure as they 
 might have been. He was tall and would 
 have seemed slender but for the bagging 
 superfluity of his garments, and he carried 
 himself with an easy grace that refused to 
 yield to the conspiracy of fatigue and
 
 In " God s Country." 15 
 
 uncouth attire. In a buttonhole of his 
 dilapidated coat was a bunch of violets 
 gathered from the roadside, and in his 
 hand a blooming branch of locust that 
 trailed a faint, sweet odor as he went. 
 
 It was four o clock in the afternoon 
 when he stopped in front of a wide, lime- 
 washed farm gate that opened into a broad 
 avenue, at the other end of which a cluster 
 of chimneys, rising out of a grove of ma 
 ples, indicated a dwelling of some sort. 
 He turned in at the gate and followed the 
 carriage-drive toward the house. The 
 sward was starred with golden dandelions ; 
 above him the maples, not yet in leaf, 
 swung their pale yellow tassels, throwing 
 frail, web-like shadows over the tender 
 green of the young bluegrass ; to right and 
 left of him lay fertile reaches of pasture, 
 broad fields of freshly turned earth, acres
 
 16 In " God s Country." 
 
 of newly springing cereals in varying 
 shades of green ; a landscape in the un 
 obtrusive tints of a water-color, domed 
 with a sweep of grayish-blue sky and 
 flooded with the pale, tremulous light of an 
 April sun. 
 
 The soft green of the young grass, the 
 furrowed fields of rich, brown loam whose 
 clean, earthy smell was borne to him by 
 the breeze, presented a soothing contrast 
 to the glare of the hard, white road. His 
 eyes dwelt lingeringly upon the prospect ; 
 he breathed deeply the fresh air, with its 
 stimulating aroma of ploughed -land, and 
 removed his hat that he might feel the cool 
 wind upon his head as he walked leisurely 
 toward the house. As he drew near, the 
 structure became more distinct in outline. 
 It was a square, old-fashioned house with 
 a hall running through the middle, and a
 
 In " God s Country." 17 
 
 porch in front, like all the other dwellings 
 he had passed during the day. Clustered 
 about it were the innumerable outbuildings 
 that give every Kentucky farm the appear 
 ance of a populous village. There was the 
 long, low line of lime-washed log cabins, 
 with its group of ebony figures in front. 
 To the left gleamed the white walls of the 
 training stable, also with its sprawling 
 group around the door. Between the 
 stable and the house there was a glimpse 
 of smooth water, where the fish-pond lay, 
 edged with a golden fringe of willows still 
 bare of foliage. Beyond rose the grassy 
 undulations of the orchard, whose green 
 billows were capped with foamy crests of 
 apple-bloom that leapt and danced in the 
 brisk, strong wind. 
 
 Presently he could distinguish a moving 
 object upon the lawn and a vivid point of
 
 i8 In "God s Country." 
 
 color glinting through the shrubbery. A 
 hammock with a feminine occupant devel 
 oped gradually against the green back 
 ground ; the point of color became a scar 
 let shawl ; and the steadily diminishing 
 perspective brought out such minor details 
 as a slender, slippered foot, tapping the 
 ground now and then to keep the ham 
 mock in motion, and a cascade of lace- 
 edged ruffles escaping to view through a 
 negligent arrangement of drapery. 
 
 He walked to within a few feet of the 
 hammock and stood watching its burden 
 across the top of a spreading syringa that 
 screened him from view. For a moment 
 he forgot his hunger and his weariness in 
 the contemplation of the most delicious 
 incarnation of idle revery his imagination 
 could picture. Though her eyes were 
 closed, she was not asleep, for the foot
 
 /// " Goifs Country" 19 
 
 kept tapping the sward ; and over the edge 
 of the hammock and down upon the grass 
 streamed a flowing abundance of red gold 
 hair, damp and clinging, that caught and 
 held the light like amber. 
 
 He was loath to disturb her, for he was 
 sure no other pose could be so perfectly, 
 so unconsciously picturesque ; but he was 
 very hungry, and the urging of the material 
 man began at last to blunt the artistic 
 sense. For a second s space he stood 
 irresolute, then, with a deploring glance at 
 his attire, which at that moment was more 
 obtrusively distasteful to him than at any 
 time since he had assumed it, he stepped 
 softly from behind the bush. 
 
 Her face was turned in the opposite 
 direction, but in a moment the odor of the 
 locust branch he carried had filled the air. 
 She opened her eyes, turned her head
 
 20 In " God s Country." 
 
 slightly, and saw him standing before her, 
 dusty and pale, asking for something to 
 eat. 
 
 She sprang up instantly and covered him 
 with a swift, startled glance. That hurried 
 inspection was sufficient to muster him into 
 the great army of outcasts, few specimens 
 of which penetrated the peaceful and 
 plenteous seclusion that environed her. 
 Then she remembered that there was no 
 one within call but the negro women at the 
 cabin, who were in as great terror of tramps 
 as herself, and would be likely to run in 
 the other direction as soon as they under 
 stood the situation. The bunch of violets 
 on his dusty lapel caught her eye just in 
 time to arrest the blood-curdling shriek 
 rising in her throat. In another moment 
 the intruder had removed his hat, and with 
 that act the look of consternation faded
 
 In " God s Country." 21 
 
 from her face. His boutonniere alone 
 would have been a certificate of char 
 acter ; the man who had violets in but" 
 tonhole was not likely to have spoons in 
 his pocket or murder in his heart : but a 
 man who took off his hat in that way was 
 above suspicion of crime. She was accus 
 tomed to seeing the male head uncovered 
 in her presence. Every man who met her, 
 whether he knew her or not, every negro 
 who passed her in the road, lifted his hat ; 
 but until this moment she had no concep 
 tion of how much might be conveyed in 
 that simple gesture. Admiration the de 
 light of an artistic temperament in what is 
 ideally beautiful ; reverence for the being 
 that enshrined it ; a humiliating sense of 
 his own unprepossessing appearance and 
 unwarrantable intrusion upon the idyllic 
 harmony of the scene : a certain lofty
 
 22 In "God s Country r 
 
 courtesy defying the drapery of indigence 
 that enveloped him ; all blended in that 
 eloquent movement, equally remote from 
 the servile obeisance of the negro and the 
 off-hand greetings she received from her 
 associates. 
 
 Yes, he was a tramp certainly, but with a 
 difference that entitled him to humane con 
 sideration and removed for the moment 
 her appalling dread of all such outcasts. 
 She would give him a lunch. 
 
 She rose, caught up with a hairpin the 
 loose, clinging mass of hair, adjusted the 
 scarlet shawl, and led the way to the porch 
 at the back of the house. She gave him a 
 chair, and going to the end of the porch 
 lifted up a clear, ringing voice, and called 
 " Meriky ! " several times. 
 
 The sound fell faintly on the ears of 
 Meriky (America), dozing in the cabin
 
 In "God s Country." 23 
 
 door, who blinked her lazy lids but did not 
 stir. " That nigger ain t worth her salt," 
 murmured Miss Ransome, more to herself 
 than to her listener, as she swept a basket 
 of hopelessly dishevelled embroidery silks 
 off a small round table and proceeded to 
 spread the lunch herself. Her pensioner 
 had eaten many lunches, and had gone 
 without many more than he had eaten, 
 since he started upon his long, tedious 
 tramp; he had eaten many lunches in many 
 lands : but he could remember nothing 
 quite so appetizing as the rosy, fragrant 
 slices of ham, the cold chicken, the beaten 
 biscuits, and the pitcher of cold milk that 
 were set before him this afternoon. 
 
 When his meal was ready, Miss Ran 
 some,, who by this time had bethought her 
 of the gallant thieveries of Claude Duval 
 and his ilk, seated herself near the table,
 
 24 In " God s Country." 
 
 so that, in case her hasty estimate of the 
 man were at fault, she would be able to 
 keep an eye upon the silver cup from which 
 he was drinking his milk, and the other 
 articles she had incautiously laid before 
 him. 
 
 She took up the embroidery, but was not 
 too much engaged to notice that his hands 
 were very small and finely shaped, and 
 that, although he was very hungry, he dis 
 posed of his food daintily, as one acquainted 
 with polite arts. 
 
 His blond hair, longer than she was ac 
 customed to seeing it worn by men, was 
 pushed negligently back from a forehead 
 whose veined pallor presented a startling 
 contrast to the sunburnt face. His eyes 
 had a pleasant light in them, and the short, 
 slightly curling beard, shading from blond 
 to pale brown, only partially concealed the
 
 In " God s Country." 25 
 
 curves of a mouth that was above reproach. 
 As Miss Ransome noted these details she 
 was moved to speculate upon his ante 
 cedent life, and presently had him relieved 
 against a background of romance that 
 would have done credit to the imagination 
 of Scott or Dumas. The slight foreign ac 
 cent that colored his speech was all that 
 was needed to give the utmost latitude to 
 invention. She could not tell from it what 
 he was, but he was not an American. She 
 thought he might be French. He had at 
 all events some connection with that old 
 land so rich in song and story. A fervid 
 fancy, untempered by experience, untram 
 melled by facts, played over him in auroral 
 flashes, and fitted his plastic figure into a 
 thousand romantic incidents. 
 
 As often as she looked directly at him, 
 she caught him in the act of withdrawing
 
 26 In "God s Country." 
 
 his eyes from a furtive perusal of herself ; 
 and when they met her own fully, as they 
 did once or twice, there crossed her mind a 
 fleeting fragment of rhyme about some 
 thing that was "deeply, darkly, beautifully 
 blue." When he had finished, he stood 
 before her a moment to acknowledge her 
 kindness. 
 
 " I vill vork for you for my dinner," he 
 said. 
 
 There was a suggestion of helplessness 
 in his imperfect utterance that appealed to 
 the maternal instinct like the lisp of a 
 baby. She was so occupied with his man 
 ner of delivering it that she did not catch 
 the import of his remark until he repeated 
 it. Then her face flushed. 
 
 " Never mind," she answered, hastily ; 
 " you are quite welcome ; besides, there is 
 nothing to do."
 
 In " God s Country." 27 
 
 It was singular that in the vagabond, 
 pure and simple, there was nothing incom 
 patible with poetic associations ; but the 
 moment she thought of him at work 
 carrying stove-wood or cutting weeds to 
 pay for his dinner the prismatic fantasy 
 in which he had just been figuring dis 
 solved instantly, leaving only the bare, un- 
 romantic fact of beggary. 
 
 " Den I vill sing you a song," he said, 
 with the same soft intonation and appeal 
 ing faultiness of speech, as he stood look 
 ing down at the guitar that lay on a chair 
 by her. 
 
 She handed him the instrument, and 
 noticed that his hands adjusted themselves 
 to neck and strings with a familiar grace 
 which all her patient practice har" ;ot yet 
 acquired. 
 
 She watched him enviously, as, stand-
 
 28 In " God s Country." 
 
 ing a little below her on the steps of the 
 porch, he tuned the guitar and daintily 
 picked a prelude. 
 
 Then, in a voice soft, mellifluous, 
 sweeter than anything she had dreamed 
 possible from a male throat, came the 
 opening measure of Schubert s serenade 
 modulated to a breath. The air was un 
 familiar, the language strange she could 
 not understand a line of it ; but what 
 matter ? What soul attuned to music 
 could mistake the burden of that exquisite 
 melody, tossed off in an obscure beer- 
 cellar to a chorus of clinking glasses and 
 drunken laughter, but freighted forever 
 with the tremulous ecstasy of " doubtful 
 hope," embodying the most tender and 
 ethereal dream of love that heart of man 
 has conceived ? She had never before 
 heard a male voice mellowed by culture,
 
 In "God s Country." 29 
 
 and at the first phrase of that song, in 
 which a soul seemed exhaled, she dropped 
 the embroidery in her lap and leaned back 
 in her chair. At the pleading pause in the 
 minor change, " Liebchen, hore mich," 
 a strange, new feeling stirred within her, 
 and something rose in her throat. 
 
 " Bebend harr ich dir entgegen, komm> 
 begliicke mich, Komm, begliicke mich, 
 begliicke mich," he sang, with appealing 
 iteration ; and as the last word fell fainting 
 a semitone above the original keynote, 
 leaving a feeling of prayer unanswered, 
 the figure on the step was seen dimly as 
 through a mist. 
 
 He returned the instrument, which she 
 took from him without a word, and sat 
 watching him through moist lashes as he 
 turned away. In a moment the battered 
 slouch hat had fallen over him like an
 
 30 fn " God s Country." 
 
 extinguisher, and a tramp of the most 
 ordinary and uninteresting appearance was 
 effaced by the mass of fluffy white pom 
 pons that covered the snowball-bush at 
 the end of the porch. As he crossed the 
 lawn on the way out, he paused beside the 
 hammock. Caught in the meshes of the 
 net was a piece of pink ribbon that had 
 been torn from Miss Ransome s dress in 
 the violent attempt to rise that followed 
 her first glimpse of the intruder. The 
 tramp disengaged it, and, after pressing 
 his lips to it, tied it in his buttonhole, 
 taking care to spread out the knot and 
 arrange the loops effectively, and went out 
 toward the road, humming, softly, " Lieb- 
 chen, hore mich." 
 
 Miss Ransome s eyes returned from the 
 snowball-bush behind which the figure had 
 disappeared to the spot where it had stood,
 
 In " God s Country" 31 
 
 and they rested upon a bunch of violets 
 that lay on the step. She took them up 
 gently, noticed that the stems were neatly 
 woven together with a blade of grass, and 
 pinned them on the bosom of her dress.
 
 II. 
 
 COLONEL RANSOM E S household con 
 sisted of himself, his daughter Lydia, and 
 a large number of negroes of all sizes, the 
 small ones being especially numerous and 
 prominent. It may be well to remark in 
 passing that he came legitimately by the 
 two essentials of a " Kentucky gentle 
 man," against which the outside world has 
 broken so many shafts of derision his 
 title and his pride of ancestry. 
 
 His baptismal names, Wickliffe Preston, 
 proclaimed his derivation from two of the 
 most prominent families in the State, and, 
 through them, his connection either by 
 blood or marriage with a majority of the 
 historic names of Kentucky and Virginia, 
 3*
 
 .In " God s Country" 33 
 
 On his mother s side he traced his lineage 
 back through the tough fibre of the Mac- 
 Dowell stock to the sturdy house of Argyll. 
 It was through the maternal strain that he 
 was turned away from the easy-going faith 
 known to the ruffle-shirted forefathers of 
 the other branch of the family as the 
 Church of England, to the uncompromising 
 Presbyterianism to which he subscribed. 
 His religious belief was not so dominant in 
 character as to exert an appreciable influ 
 ence upon his outer life, but it was a part 
 of the man, and as far as it went it was 
 Calvinistic. It had come down to him 
 along with the ancestral record and the 
 family silver, and he no more thought of 
 turning it over for inspection than of 
 questioning the solidity of his plate or the 
 authenticity of his pedigree. He had 
 
 perhaps but an imperfect impression of the 
 3
 
 34 -fn " God s Country" 
 
 articles embraced in his creed, but any 
 thing that could have been shown to exist 
 therein would have met with his instant 
 approval and strenuous defence. He 
 would have fought for it as valiantly, bled 
 for it as cheerfully, as he had fought and 
 bled for State rights. 
 
 His ancestors had been conspicuously 
 concerned in every historic event of im 
 portance since their first settlement in 
 Virginia ; and, according to his reasoning, 
 the men who bought with their blood the 
 greatest country on earth, and nursed it 
 through a perilous infancy, were as glori 
 ously deserving of knighthood as the le 
 gions that followed William the Conqueror 
 into England. Their deeds were not less 
 heroic because they lacked the heraldic 
 patent that was but the outward symbol of 
 achievement ; their nobility was none the
 
 In " God s Country: 35 
 
 less real because untitled : and he was as 
 proudly conscious of good blood as if his 
 plate had borne a dozen quarterings. 
 
 Sired by an illustrious line of fighters, 
 his military record followed natural At 
 the beginning of the war, when , since h e 
 Guard, hotly indignant at the acti ^Mof 
 Kentucky, shouldered the goverr^ient 
 arms and marched after BuckneK into 
 Tennessee, Wickliffe Ransome made one 
 of the impatient throng of horsemen who 
 for weeks after the abandonment of 
 neutrality filled all the roads leading 
 southward, hurrying across the line to cast 
 in their lot with the young Confederacy. 
 He started with the Sixth Kentucky, and 
 followed its fortunes through the war, 
 winning his promotion brilliantly in a 
 brigade that fought like the three hundred 
 at Thermopylae. When the crowning dis-
 
 36 In "God s Country." 
 
 aster came, and he returned, covered with 
 the humiliation of defeat, he found his 
 wife dead, and his possessions reduced to 
 a motherless daughter then nine years 
 of TU f^ four hundred acres of bluegrass 
 la- it as ch rown w i tn weeds and brush, and 
 thvj f c smantled wreck of a once luxurious 
 hom s stead standing open to the wind and 
 
 The house was not fit to live in, and the 
 land was worth nothing without the labor 
 that had made it profitable. The negroes 
 were free, and there was no money to 
 begin the work of reparation. The child 
 and the sister, widowed by the conflict, 
 who must hereafter depend upon him for 
 support, spurred him to endeavor. The 
 land was mortgaged, and with the money 
 thus obtained the house was repaired, 
 Stock and farming implements were
 
 In " God s Country r 37 
 
 bought, and a number of negroes were col 
 lected who, now that there was nothing 
 more to steal in the bare land, were willing 
 to work upon promise of pay. Mrs. 
 Payne, the Colonel s widowed sister, who 
 had cared for his daughter since her 
 mother s death, came to live with him; 
 and under her womanly and ingenious 
 supervision the home began to assume 
 something of the old luxurious aspect. 
 Gradually the wilderness was reclaimed, 
 and blossomed as the rose, yielding the 
 more abundantly for its season of rest. It 
 was marvellous how quickly all trace of 
 devastation vanished. Three years after 
 the surrender of Lee a stranger travelling 
 through the country, who had seen it in 
 war-time, congratulated the Colonel on the 
 swift recovery from disaster. 
 
 "Well," replied the Colonel, proudly,
 
 38 In "God s Country" 
 
 "it is God s country, and the land don t 
 need much coaxin ." 
 
 It was now ten years since the war. 
 The cheery little woman who had presided 
 over the Colonel s house, and bestowed a 
 tender maternal care upon his child, was 
 dead^ and the bright-eyed, fair-haired 
 daughter had risen to the dignity of man 
 aging his domestic affairs. 
 
 The Colonel was still young in spite of 
 his forty-five years and the iron-gray locks 
 that waved thickly about his fine head. 
 He was six feet two inches in height, and 
 the figure, once slender and wiry, had 
 acquired in the last decade a generous 
 breadth of chest and shoulder that was 
 massive without being ponderous ; and 
 this, with his erect military carriage, gave 
 him an imposing presence ; on horseback 
 he was superb. The fire of youth still
 
 In " God s Country." 39 
 
 burned in his steel-blue eye ; and in the 
 strong, combative chin and the level line 
 of the lips lurked the unflinching courage, 
 the tenacity of opinion and purpose, that 
 were part of his inheritance. His face 
 was suffused with a mild ruddiness induced 
 by liberal living and an habitual but tem 
 perate use of the native beverage in its 
 purity and the yellow perfection of age. 
 The habit of command at home and in the 
 field had fixed upon him the authoritative 
 manner that a stranger would mistake for 
 arrogance, which in the presence of his 
 friends, tempered by the suavity of the 
 man of the world, was at once commanding 
 and gentle. 
 
 Toward women he bore himself with the 
 insidious persuasiveness, the soft, caressing 
 manner peculiar to the Southerner, for 
 which the Kentuckian is pre-eminently dis-
 
 40 In " God s Country." 
 
 tinguished a manner in which a flattering 
 show of homage is blended with that ten 
 der and apparently absorbing solicitude by 
 which a man seems to envelop the object 
 of his attentions in a protecting presence ; 
 to become at the same moment her guar 
 dian and her slave ; to surround her with 
 an atmosphere of sanctity while imploring 
 the favor that would dissipate it ; a man 
 ner irresistibly fascinating to women, even 
 when it is known to be insincere. 
 
 His attitude toward the sex was charac 
 teristic. Beauty was not only a charm, but 
 a virtue. The woman who had no claim 
 to beauty was a social nonentity ; she who 
 had lost the bloom and freshness of youth, 
 an unlit shrine, interesting only as an altar 
 round which had once shone the flame that 
 compelled his worship. To him the ideal 
 woman was, first of all beautiful, and one
 
 In "God s Country." 41 
 
 who could think only with her heart. All 
 mental activity was regarded as pernicious, 
 and the woman who exhibited signs of it 
 was held in the same curious aloofness 
 with which he would have examined some 
 strange, glittering insect that might or 
 might not have a sting. A woman could 
 not possibly think lucidly ; any attempt on 
 her part to deal at first hand with the prob 
 lems of life could only result in increased 
 confusion ; it were far better that she did 
 not meddle with edged tools. No gift, 
 spiritual or mental, could compensate him 
 for the absence of that absolute physical 
 perfection which the Kentuckian seeks 
 with equal pertinacity in his sweetheart and 
 his horse : in the realization of which he 
 believes "careful grooming " to play a part 
 only second to that of "good blood." 
 The love of such a man might be lack-
 
 42 In "God s Country." 
 
 ing in poetry, in ideality, even in the "stay 
 ing" quality he considers so essential to 
 man and beast, but it was edged with the 
 keen relish of the connoisseur, which was 
 never wholly lost in the lover. Like all his 
 countrymen, Colonel Ransome subscribed 
 loyally to the belief that Kentucky women 
 lead the world in beauty ; and while this 
 opinion was attributable in a measure to a 
 natural pride in the products of his native 
 State, it was not without an element of 
 sound philosophy. Occupied for the 
 greater portion of his life with the care and 
 breeding of blooded stock, experience had 
 taught him the power of selection in 
 accenting a type when exercised through 
 successive generations with reference 10 
 the same quality. He considered the 
 physical perfection of Kentucky women 
 directly due to the fastidious instinct of
 
 In "God s Country" 43 
 
 natural selection in the men, which made 
 beauty the dominant consideration in mar 
 riage. With this irresistible influence at 
 work in the interest of beauty it were 
 indeed singular if surpassing results were 
 not obtained. He frequently remarked 
 that a man owed it to his children to marry 
 a fine woman ; and those who had known 
 his wife cheerfully testified that he had 
 fully discharged his obligation to posterity. 
 Indeed, his daughter Lydia was a sufficient 
 proof of the possibilities of his theory when 
 systematically carried out. His wife died 
 young; he had been spared the ordeal of 
 watching her fade and grow old ; and death 
 and time had obliterated such trifling 
 imperfections of temperament as might 
 have jarred his domestic harmony, leaving 
 only the charm of a beautiful and gracious 
 presence that was his one sacred memory.
 
 44 I* " God s Country." 
 
 Lydia had rewarded his discriminating 
 choice by faithfully reproducing the attrac 
 tions that influenced it. Like her mother, 
 she had that fineness of organism that is 
 the first requisite of beauty; she had the 
 same exquisite pearly flesh-tint that is 
 neither pallid nor ruddy, the same delicate 
 arch of the brow, and that dark shading of 
 brows and lashes that gives a peculiar 
 piquancy of coloring to an ensemble other 
 wise purely blond. The profile that gained 
 a subtle individual charm by its deviation 
 from the prescribed line, the sensitive 
 curve of the nostrils, the full, warm mouth 
 were the same ; but she had a unique 
 charm of her own imparted by the temper 
 of the paternal metal. She reflected her 
 father s salient traits, and in her carriage, 
 which he would have described as a "free 
 gait," there was a dash of the military
 
 In "God s Country r 45 
 
 erectness and precision of movement that 
 distinguished his own bearing. A person 
 ality charged with a fine nervous fire and 
 an effervescent flow of vitality that found 
 expression in the mobile and rapid play of 
 features registering every fleeting thought, 
 every passing emotion, gave to her that 
 irresistible sparkle beside which the dreamy 
 languor of the Oriental becomes dull, the 
 classic repose of Greek ideals cold and im 
 passive. 
 
 The red gold of ripe corn was on her 
 hair, and in the liquid depths of her eyes 
 was a glow of rich, warm amber-brown that 
 is most nearly approached by the color of 
 fine old whisky. She shared her father s 
 opinions, and endorsed his politics with 
 that feminine loyalty that is the more 
 stanch and abiding because void of under 
 standing. She did not know why her
 
 46 In "God s Country." 
 
 father was a Democrat, but she was quite 
 sure that his principles were the only ones 
 that could be entertained by a gentleman, 
 that his political position was the only one 
 tenable. She was proud of his military 
 record. It surrounded him with a halo of 
 heroism, a glamour of romance that gave 
 him a certain sacredness in her eyes. She 
 loved to think, as she watched him riding 
 across his own peaceful fields, that it was 
 thus, with just as little fear, with the same 
 superb horsemanship, but with more of fire 
 and ardor, he had ridden at the enemy in 
 those terrib e days of wreck and disaster. 
 " What a pity it had all been for nothing ! " 
 At this thought the tears would come. 
 The gory recital of " Mission Ridge " and 
 Chickamauga was an old story to her, but 
 she heard it always with a heart swelling 
 with the admiration of physical courage
 
 In " God s Country." 47 
 
 and recklessness of life that had come to 
 her with her blood. 
 
 The third contingent of the Colonel s 
 household, the negroes, cut a conspicuous 
 figure in his fortunes. Impoverished by 
 their emancipation, and compelled to feed 
 them when he could no longer compel 
 them to work, they were a continual drain 
 upon his resources, the extent of which he 
 did not realize, because he had been ac 
 customed all his life to seeing them around 
 him in numbers, and considered them in 
 dispensable to a moderately comfortable 
 existence. 
 
 His obtuseness to the immediate de 
 mand for remedial measures was due to 
 two causes : first, to the necessity for labor 
 of some kind to till the land ; second, to 
 an inherent love of ease and display, fos 
 tered by education and pampered by
 
 48 In "God s Country." 
 
 indulgence until it had become the pre 
 dominating influence of his life. The long 
 exemption through years of prosperity, 
 when personal exertion was unnecessary, 
 had resulted in the lofty aloofness from 
 vulgar occupations that had become second 
 nature. He belonged to a class of men 
 whom future generations, bred in an atmos 
 phere of new ideas, will not readily un 
 derstand. Active, determined, fertile in 
 resource, but dominated by an intense 
 distaste for personal exertion ; easily fa 
 tigued under ordinary circumstances, but 
 displaying in an emergency,, through sheer 
 force of will, surpassing vigor and endur 
 ance. Not given to athletic sports, yet 
 compact, well-grown, and muscular ; bear 
 ing unmurmuringly the rigors and priva 
 tions of war that try men s souls more than 
 the day of battle, but distinguished in time
 
 In " God s Country." 49 
 
 of peace for an insuperable aversion to 
 effort that amounted to actual helpless 
 ness ; regarding women with a paternal 
 indulgence unlimited in certain directions, 
 yet frequently requiring of them services 
 no longer to be demanded of the negroes, 
 which they were too indolent to perform 
 for themselves. 
 
 These exactions were in the majority of 
 cases unconscious. The man who made 
 them would have resented vigorously the 
 imputation that he was pampered by the 
 women of his household at the expense of 
 their own comfort. He invariably pre 
 served the old formula. " Have this or 
 that done," he would remark to his sister 
 or daughter, oblivious of the fact that now 
 there was no one to do it but the person 
 audressed. Never at any time was there a 
 glimmer of suspicion that there was any-
 
 50 In " God s Country" 
 
 *hmg in his behavior at variance with the 
 cnivalric sentiments and grandiloquent ora 
 tory with which he would have responded 
 to such a toast as " The Women of Ken 
 tucky." A single incident of Colonel Ran- 
 some s daily life will serve to illustrate the 
 demand for personal attention character 
 istic of the Kentuckian of this period. 
 His morning toilet was the event of the 
 day, unless the repetition of it, which in 
 warm weather always occurred at noon, 
 might be considered of equal importance. 
 The water for the bath had to be carried 
 from the spring, which was nearly a quarter 
 of a mile from the house. In order to get 
 a sufficient quantity within a reasonable 
 time several negroes were engaged in the 
 transportation at once. The toilet proper 
 was an elaborate process, performed al 
 ways with the same deliberate precision,
 
 /// "God s Country." 51 
 
 during which the master of the house was 
 attended by half-a-dozen negroes of both 
 sexes and all sizes, in the various capa 
 cities of bootblack, purveyors of towels, 
 shaving water, and fresh linen, not to 
 mention the boy who saddled and held his 
 horse until he was ready to mount, or 
 those who served him as errand boys or 
 bearers of messages to others beyond the 
 reach of his voice. 
 
 A grateful relief pervaded the premises 
 when the ceremony was finished, and 
 " Mahs Wick," immaculate, glowing, and 
 odorous from the lavish application of 
 soap, passed out, leaving behind him a 
 room so thickly strewn with limp towels 
 and discarded linen that it looked like the 
 track of a cyclone. A stranger would have 
 supposed that so much bustling prepara 
 tion indicated a trip to town, or at least a
 
 52 In " God s Country." 
 
 ride through the neighborhood, and would 
 have been surprised when it was all over to 
 see the Colonel mount his sleek gray mare, 
 groomed as if for a premium show, and 
 rack off to the field to superintend the 
 hands, who, accustomed to an overseer, 
 worked only under his personal eye. 
 
 In addition to the numerous retinue that 
 served about the house, there must be 
 field-hands and stable-hands, and the habit 
 ual prodigality was displayed in the num 
 ber employed. The extravagance was not, 
 however, wholly without excuse. At least 
 three negroes were required to do the work 
 of one active, energetic white man. They 
 had to be paid the same, and they ate just 
 as much. When a man was hired to work 
 on the place, he had to be furnished with 
 a cabin to live in ; his fuel came from the 
 Colonel s wood-pile or coal-house, his food
 
 In "God s Country." 53 
 
 from the Colonel s table ; and it was sel 
 dom that he did not bring a family with 
 him. Sometimes the women worked in the 
 house ; oftener they did nothing more 
 profitable than to accumulate with exasper 
 ating ease and rapidity a worthless brood 
 that fed, like grasshoppers, on the fat of 
 the land. 
 
 Now that the negroes were free to 
 choose their masters, they flocked where 
 there was the fairest promise of good liv 
 ing ; and they seemed to sniff from afar 
 " Mahs Wick s " bounty and abundance. 
 They were just as numerous around him 
 as they had been before the war, and the 
 only difference in their condition was an in 
 credible increase in shiftlessness, ragged- 
 ness, and impertinence. In spite of their 
 small deserts, Colonel Ransome, like all 
 men who had owned slaves, had a weak-
 
 54 / " God s Country." 
 
 ness for the negro. Naturally generous, he 
 treated them with an indulgence that a 
 Northern employer could neither under 
 stand nor approve ; in return for which they 
 plundered his " truck patch " and clandes 
 tinely peddled the watermelons they were 
 unable to consume. When his attention 
 was called to the number of mouths fed 
 daily from his storeroom and smokehouse, 
 he replied good-naturedly : " If you don t 
 give them what they can eat, they ll steal 
 it. You can t get out of feedin em, a- 
 you might as well have em where you can 
 get some good out of em." 
 
 He liked to see them about him. Their 
 presence in numbers accorded with the 
 inherent tendency to pomp and ostentation 
 that distinguished his class. They re 
 minded him of " old times," they helped 
 him to forget the humiliation of defeat, the
 
 In "God s Country." 55 
 
 outrage of emancipation that was to him 
 nothing more than a violent confiscation of 
 property. It was some small consolation 
 to be able to remark, as he frequently did, 
 that, " In spite of their damned meddling, 
 things were not so very different after 
 all."
 
 III. 
 
 THE remaining factor in the Colonel s 
 destiny was the friends, who, like the ne 
 groes, were numerous and always with him. 
 His dinners were famous in a land cele 
 brated for its cuisine. Nowhere in all the 
 Bluegrass region could a saddle of south 
 down mutton be found in such juicy perfec 
 tion as on Wick Ransome s table. His 
 cellar contained an apparently inexhaust 
 ible supply of native wine ; and from a 
 long, narrow closet in the dining-room came 
 forth, on special occasions, imported varie 
 ties selected with the discrimination of ex 
 perience and a fastidious taste. His lavish 
 hospitality, his love of good company, the 
 
 seductive atmosphere of abundance un- 
 56
 
 In "-God s Country 57 
 
 grudgingly shared that surrounded him, 
 drew about him the remnant of ante-bellum 
 society that had survived defeat and loss. 
 His house became the centre of the gay, 
 brilliant coterie who found it possible to 
 take up the old luxurious life where they 
 had dropped it at the sound of " boots and 
 saddles; " and this element was yearly re 
 inforced by the natural increase of the 
 population, and the incursion of visitors 
 from all parts of the country. In summer 
 his house was a resort to which his city 
 friends flocked, bringing horses, equipages, 
 servants. Any man or woman entitled to 
 the friendship of a gentleman was welcome 
 to come and sojourn there indefinitely, and 
 friends brought their friends. As a resort 
 the place had many attractions besides the 
 cellar, the well-filled table, and the deb 
 onair courtesy of the host. It was near
 
 58 In "God s Country." 
 
 enough to the Kentucky River for a party 
 to drive down and back in a day, taking a 
 picnic dinner in the midst of wild scenery 
 of unrivalled picturesqueness ; there was 
 the Colonel s handsome daughter to pre 
 side over the festivities ; the Colonel s 
 horses always at the free disposal of his 
 guests ; his fish-pond, from which, even in 
 midsummer, could be drawn the savory 
 perch and newlight that nobody could fry 
 quite so appetizmgly as old Cynthy, the 
 Colonel s cook. 
 
 No one enjoyed these annual invasions 
 of his premises more than the Colonel. 
 Each member of the throng that gathered 
 around him felt a sort of proud proprie 
 torship in " Wick." 
 
 His fine, commanding figure, his hand 
 some face radiating good-fellowship, his 
 identification with the cause lost but rev-
 
 In "God s Country. " 59 
 
 erently remembered, endeared him to 
 them. He was a splendid expression of 
 the type of manhood they admired ; he 
 was one with them in their pride of 
 ancestry, their race prejudice, their views 
 of government ; he represented them in 
 every phase of their life, social and polit 
 ical. This feeling was made apparent to 
 him in a thousand flatteries open and 
 insidious. He lived in an atmosphere of. 
 adulation, gratifying to his inborn love of 
 supremacy, that finally became as neces 
 sary to him as the attendance of his 
 servants. 
 
 The worm in the bud of this gay, impe 
 rious life was the mortgage and the debts 
 that every year became more and more of 
 an incubus. Colonel Ransome could not 
 understand how it was that, with four 
 hundred acres of the best land in the
 
 6o /// " God s Country." 
 
 State, yielding abundantly every year, and 
 the annual sale of stock, from which he 
 realized thousands of dollars, he could 
 not " make both ends meet." Why the 
 profits of his farm and stable did not cover 
 the expense of his establishment was a 
 problem with which he grappled in vain. 
 It would be just as far from practical solu 
 tion on the last day of his life as in the 
 hour it first confronted him. If he saw the 
 necessity for curtailing expenses, he never 
 found the precise time or place for putting 
 on the brakes. If it occurred to him that 
 the negroes who drained him and the 
 friends who visited him were partially re 
 sponsible for the inadequacy of his income, 
 he turned wearily from the thought as 
 from an evil without remedy. If it was 
 bad getting on with the negroes, getting 
 on without them was impossible. The
 
 /// " God s Country" 61 
 
 alternative of restricting himself to a rigid 
 schedule of economy that would exclude 
 his friends from a free participation in his 
 abundance and his pleasures was so re 
 pulsive to his feelings, his taste, his con 
 ception of hospitality, that he did not 
 entertain it for a moment. The few 
 friends who thought they discerned, be 
 neath the purple and fine linen of high life, 
 the spectre of impending bankruptcy, re 
 marked commiseratingly to each other 
 that " It was a pity Wick did not manage 
 better," and came down the next summer 
 and preyed upon him as usual. 
 
 Years before, the Colonel had cast a hope* 
 ful eye on young Beverly Johnson, whose 
 ample estate joined his own. If Beverly 
 should marry Lydia, he could save her 
 inheritance from the hammer- and for a 
 long time her father had been unable to
 
 62 In " God s Country." 
 
 see any other way out of the slough into 
 which he had been steadily ploughing since 
 1865. The thing had come about as he, 
 desired in a perfectly simple and natural 
 way, and without any interference on his 
 part. Beverly and Lydia had grown up 
 together, had seen each other every day of 
 their lives, except when she was at school 
 and he at college, during which period 
 they had carried on a mildly amatory cor 
 respondence. The brief courtship that 
 followed their return ended in a formal 
 -proposal by Beverly, who, from the first 
 moment of their reunion, had been in a 
 condition bordering on dementia, and its 
 acceptance by Lydia, who made up for any 
 lack of demonstrative fervor by a steady 
 graciousness of demeanor. 
 
 To her it seemed a matter of course that 
 she should marry Bev. Next to her father
 
 In "God s Country r 63 
 
 he was the handsomest man she knew. 
 She sometimes wished he were an inch 
 taller and had something of her father s 
 imperial manner and martial dash. But 
 men like her father were rare, and Bev 
 was nearer the realization of her concep 
 tion of manhood than anyone else within 
 the range of her acquaintance, which was 
 extensive. She would have liked him 
 better had he been a part of that heroic 
 struggle that raised her father above ordi 
 nary men in her eyes, but it was Bev s 
 misfortune, not his fault, that he had been 
 too young to fight. He had often ex 
 pressed regret that he had not been old 
 enough to take a hand in that strife, none 
 tne less glorious in his estimation because 
 the event was dire. She was sure he 
 would have made a brave soldier if he had 
 had a chance ; and he was the pick of the
 
 64 In " God s Country." 
 
 country, everybody knew that. Because 
 she considered him the pick of the country 
 she had always intended marrying him. 
 This intention, which had never wavered, 
 dated back to her remotest remembrance. 
 During the naive period of childhood she 
 had frequently advised him of it, and it 
 apparently met with his approval, though 
 he manifested none of the enthusiasm that 
 marked the subsequent interval, through 
 which Lydia maintained a wary reserve 
 that led him to believe she had changed 
 her mind. 
 
 It had never occurred to her that in the 
 course of events he might form other 
 plans. Had the thought ever come to her, 
 she had enough of her father s debonair 
 confidence, and was sufficiently conscious 
 of her personal advantages, to dismiss it 
 without serious consideration, Though
 
 In " God s Country." 65 
 
 fond of him, her feeling was not of a 
 character to disturb the even flow of her 
 existence ; and she had always been too 
 well assured of his devotion to experience 
 the thrill of triumph in its consummation 
 that other women enjoy under similar cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 In due time the lover, floating airily on 
 the conviction that no other man had been 
 so lucky since the rite of marriage was in 
 stituted, came to talk the affair over with 
 his father-in-law-elect. It was now that 
 Colonel Ransome inflicted upon himself 
 the crucifixion of making a clean breast of 
 the supposed secret of his impending ruin. 
 Beverly was not surprised. He was not 
 blind : he had seen long before where all that 
 reckless extravagance must lead. The end 
 was a little nearer than he thought, but it 
 "de no difference in his plans. He
 
 66 In " God s Country." 
 
 would be just as proud of Lyd, he 
 affirmed, if she hadn t a cent. He had 
 reached that beatific state in which a man 
 wants to take the world in his arms and 
 kiss it, and a national panic could not have 
 subdued his ardor. In a burst of generos 
 ity he proposed to take up the mortgage 
 at once and relieve the Colonel from all 
 further anxiety. 
 
 "You see, Colonel," remarked the 
 young man, sagely, "it was bound to come, 
 with those bloods livin off you all summer 
 and the darkies thievin from you the year 
 round. But you couldn t help it. You 
 can t get rid of the niggers, and a man 
 can t ask his friends to stay at home. It 
 will all be right, though. What I ve got is 
 yours if you want it ; and you can depend 
 on me not to let the place go out of the 
 family. I ve had too many good times here
 
 In "God s Country." 67 
 
 myself to want to see it in the ban s of 
 strangers." 
 
 From no other man could Colonel Ran- 
 some have accepted such material consola 
 tion without the bitterest humiliation. But 
 Bev was like his own son. He had spent 
 almost as much of his time at the Colonel s 
 house as he had at his own. His father 
 had been the Colonel s classmate at col 
 lege, his companion-in-arms. There had 
 been no stancher friend, no braver soldier, 
 than Hardin Johnson ; there was no 
 brighter record in all that weary struggle 
 than his. When he fell in battle, it was 
 to Wickliffe Ransome that he confided his 
 dying messages ; and the Colonel had 
 always shown an indulgent fondness for 
 the son of so dear a friend, so valiant a 
 soldier, even before he began to regard 
 him as a possible solution of his domestic
 
 68 In "God s Country." 
 
 problem. This affectionate interest was 
 fully returned by the younger man, for 
 whom his father s friend and comrade 
 embodied at once the dignity and heroism 
 of a supreme struggle and the profound 
 pathos of defeat. He had early discov 
 ered the weak spot in the Colonel s char 
 acter, but loyally refrained from judging 
 him. As the victim of Northern interfer 
 ence, he was entitled to indulgence and 
 sympathy, and Bev was as full of excuses 
 for him as Lydia herself could have been 
 had she been capable of divining the ne 
 cessity for them. 
 
 At the close of the interview that termi 
 nated with Beverly s generous proposition, 
 Colonel Ransome immediately sought his 
 daughter, resolved to make an unreserved 
 statement of the situation, and give Bev 
 the full benefit of his handsome behavior.
 
 In " God s Country." 69 
 
 He admired the young fellow s contempt 
 for money, the youthful ardor and loverlike 
 enthusiasm with which he set his sweet 
 heart above everything, in an age when 
 young men were beginning to sacrifice 
 their instinctive preference for beauty on 
 the altar of greed. Miss Ransome lis 
 tened to her father s recital without com 
 ment. In one aspect the situation waa 
 humiliating ; in another, extremely flatter 
 ing; but she could not fully appreciate it 
 from either point of view. " It was nice of 
 Bev," but it was no more than was to be 
 expected of the man she had honored with 
 her preference. She did not know enough 
 of the value of money to measure the fi 
 nancial obligation ; and the privations en 
 tailed by the absence of wealth were too 
 remote from her experience for her to 
 realize what he had saved her from. She
 
 70 In " God s Country" 
 
 could not apprehend, so acutely as her 
 father, all that was involved in the sale of 
 an estate. To him it meant much more 
 than the mere loss of property, though that 
 was sufficiently appalling to a man of his 
 tastes and habits. It meant exile from the 
 only country in which living could be a 
 pleasure ; it meant the abdication of the 
 enviable position he held in the commu 
 nity ; it meant the immediate and perma 
 nent cessation of the ostentatious hospital 
 ity for which he was noted. These harrow 
 ing possibilities were now removed ; the 
 incubus was lifted ; and he at least was not 
 likely to undervalue the opportune gener 
 osity that had rescued him. 
 
 It was now April ; Lydia and Beverly 
 were to be married in October, and the 
 Colonel s face was less sternly thoughtful 
 in moments of repose than it had been for
 
 In "God s Country: 71 
 
 years. The usual swarm of summer visit 
 ors was expected, and preparations for 
 their entertainment were going steadily for 
 ward. This would be the last summer 
 Lydia would preside as hostess over the 
 festivities of the dashing, convivial throng 
 of " blue-bloods " that gathered annually 
 around her father s table. She would not 
 have been his daughter had she not en 
 joyed her position ; and a Southern girl at 
 that age enjoys everything. She knows 
 that her social career is practically finished 
 when she marries, and she marries very 
 young. 
 
 She keenly realizes the exceeding brev 
 ity of that delicious interregnum between 
 the authority of the parent and that of the 
 husband. She knows that her social rec 
 ord must be made before it is over ; that 
 she abdicates her belleship with her nuptial
 
 72 In " God s Country" 
 
 vows ; that, owing to the strict code obtain 
 ing in her country, marriage, to her, is like 
 death to the unconverted it admits of no 
 subsequent capitulation. The determination 
 to wring this brief interval dry of enjoy 
 ment, the unwearying effort to get at the 
 last sweet drop, give her an eager zest of life 
 that makes her an unfailing stimulant to 
 all who come in contact with her, keep her 
 strung up to a pitch of enthusiasm that is 
 irresistibly infectious. She has no time to 
 discriminate ; everything pleases her ; she 
 is never tired, never bored. She blooms 
 like a cactus all at once. Her ddbut is 
 like the popping of a champagne cork. 
 She imparts the effervescent sparkle of that 
 incomparable vintage to the current with 
 which she mingles ; she falls upon the dull 
 and colorless conventions of society like a 
 flash of irridescence ; with her volatile, in-
 
 In " God s Country." 73 
 
 exhaustible flow of animal spirits she com 
 bines, within certain limits, an impetuous 
 abandon that makes her the nearest ap 
 proach yet discovered to the " Eve inno 
 cent, yet fallen " of Chateaubriand. Be 
 fore she has time to lose the fire and fresh 
 ness of youth she is hurried away to the 
 priest, and disappears from the horizon 
 amid the gorgeous blazonry of an elaborate 
 wedding, a ceremony through which the 
 groom moves meekly inconspicuous, as 
 might some antique captive through the 
 pomp and pageantry of a Roman triumph. 
 From that moment she is a vanished de 
 light, a departed glory, a hallowed tradition 
 to the men who did not achieve the sublime 
 happiness of marrying her; but she is a 
 queen no more. The allegiance, the hom 
 age she formerly commanded are trans 
 ferred without loss of time, and she is ever
 
 74 In " God s Country." 
 
 after spoken of in the past tense. The 
 average length of a career is three years ; 
 more frequently it is but two ; often but 
 one. This was Miss Ransome s third sum 
 mer, and her last. She intended it to be a 
 brilliant one.
 
 IV. 
 
 IT is only fair to exonerate Miss Ran- 
 some from the suspicion of posing on the 
 lawn for effect. She had gone there with 
 the most commonplace purpose imaginable 
 that of drying the hair she had just 
 washed, in the wind and sun. This 
 method involved much less labor than rub 
 bing it dry with a towel, and it gave her an 
 opportunity to finish at the same time the 
 novel she had been reading in a desultory 
 way for a week. She felt perfectly secure 
 on the lawn in a pink wrapper in the 
 middle of the afternoon, for the dweller in 
 the country is not subject to the unexpected 
 calls that make urban life a bondage. 
 There was barely one chance in a hundred 
 75
 
 76 In " God s Country." 
 
 that she would be interrupted, and the 
 hundredth chance had befallen. Upon re 
 flection she feared she had presented a 
 very ungraceful, not to say immodest, fig 
 ure in the hammock. She would have 
 given much to know just how she appeared 
 to the intruder, though he was only a 
 tramp. She blushed as she remembered 
 the exposed foot and ankle ; and that night, 
 as she stood before the mirror combing 
 out the tangled mass of hair, she was 
 haunted by an echo of that plaintive 
 " Liebchen, hore mich." She had not 
 lighted the lamp, for the moon flooded the 
 room ; and when she had finished her hair, 
 she sat down in the rocker by the window 
 and looked out upon the moonlit garden 
 and the blossomy orchard slope beyond. 
 
 For the first time in her life something 
 like a regret for the narrow limits of her
 
 In " God s Country." 77 
 
 experience stirred in her; but the want, 
 whatever it might be, was intangible and 
 undefined. What was the world like out 
 side this "garden spot" the world from 
 which he had come with his soft, pleading 
 voice, and his never-to-be-forgotten song? 
 Where and to whom would he next sing it 
 in payment for a dinner ? 
 
 The next morning, as Lydia and her 
 father sat at breakfast, the latter remarked : 
 
 " Well, Lyd, I ve got you a gardener at 
 last. He don t look like he is much ac 
 count ; but if you watch him close enough, 
 maybe you can make him do till old Dave 
 gets well. I met him in the road last night 
 as I came home, and he asked for work. 
 The po devil looked so hard up I thought 
 I d give him a chance." 
 
 M We need somebody in the garden awful 
 bad," replied Lydia. " When s he comin ?"
 
 78 In " God s Country." 
 
 " He s here now. I brought him along 
 with me in the buggy, an told him he 
 could sleep in Schneider s cabin." 
 
 " He s white, then." 
 
 " Yes, and Dutch as kraut. I told him 
 to go round to the garden as soon as he 
 got his breakfast, an you d give him his 
 orders." 
 
 It was a warm, bright morning, the sort 
 of day that, coming early in spring, fills the 
 amateur florist with feverish activity; and 
 as soon as breakfast was over, Lydia, 
 happy in the knowledge that at last she 
 had somebody to do Mrhat was so needed, 
 hurried out in the pink wrapper of yester 
 day and an ample sun-bonnet to pounce 
 greedily on the new man, and get as much 
 as possible out of him in the shortest space 
 ot time. The portion set apart for flowers 
 was the lower end of the garden proper ; a
 
 In " God s Country: 79 
 
 large square of ground running up into the 
 angle formed by the L of the house and 
 laid off geometrically, in beds with blue- 
 grass borders, and earthen walks between. 
 In the center stood a circular frame cov 
 ered with a mat of honeysuckle, offering a 
 refreshing shelter from the sun, which was 
 getting very hot. She drew a rustic seat 
 into the shadow and waited. In a few 
 minutes she heard the click of the garden 
 gate, and, looking up, saw the tramp of 
 yesterday approaching leisurely, a knot of 
 pink ribbon in his button-hole. The blood 
 surged up into her temples as she remarked 
 his decoration and noted the exact spot 
 upon her gown from which it had disap 
 peared. By this time he had reached her 
 and had bared his fine head with the in 
 imitable gesture that had won him his din 
 ner the day before. For some reason it
 
 8o In " God s Country." 
 
 did not impress her now as then. The 
 pink ribbon that would have been a roman 
 tic and inoffensive fancy in a picturesque 
 vagabond who was nothing to her was 
 egregious presumption in her servant, and 
 she resented it. Moreover, she was ex 
 tremely mortified at having spent an after 
 noon in rearing a dream palace about a 
 person " as Dutch as kraut," in whom her 
 father had instantly recognized " a po 
 devil," and nothing more ; whom her father 
 held in that compassionate contempt that 
 was more damning than denunciation. 
 
 She understood perfectly that the only 
 thing to do was to ignore the decoration ; 
 but the chill of November was in her man 
 ner as she rose and proceeded to give di 
 rections in a cold, peremptory tone she 
 never thought of using to the negroes. He 
 stood meanwhile hat in hand, his attitude
 
 In " God s Country." 81 
 
 the supreme expression of respectful atten 
 tion. He was not looking at her, but she 
 could just catch a gleam in his eye that 
 contradicted, effaced his assumption of 
 humility. It first puzzled, then annoyed 
 her, until her eye chanced to fall upon the 
 bosom of her dress, where, withered, for 
 gotten, but clamorous of injudicious inter 
 est, drooped the violets she had picked up 
 from the step. The blood mounted again 
 under the sun-bonnet, but she went on giv 
 ing her orders, and presently unfastened 
 the flowers, and tossed them carelessly 
 where he could not fail to see them. When 
 he began work she went back to the rustic 
 seat under the honeysuckle, and sat watch 
 ing him from the shadow. She was ill at 
 ease. The illusions of yesterday had been 
 rudely dissipated : the romantic vagabond 
 had sunk to the level of a common laborer ;
 
 8 2 In " God s Country." 
 
 the troubadour was extinguished in the 
 Dutchman who had slept in the cabin with 
 Schneider. Had he belonged to any other 
 nationality it would not have been so bad. 
 She had seen but few Germans, and those 
 of the lowest class. There was no room in 
 her narrow experience for comparison, for 
 discrimination. Schneider had been there 
 a year, and he had been treated in all re 
 spects as one of the negroes, except that in 
 consideration of his white skin he had been 
 given a bed to himself and allowed to eat 
 at the Colonel s table after the family were 
 through. Even the negroes looked down 
 upon a "white nigga." The condition of 
 servitude was the paramount fact that fixed 
 a man s place in the social scale ; but a 
 white servant was an anomaly, a foreigner 
 was an uncertain quantity in the social 
 equation, he was not quite as good as a
 
 In " God s Country." 83 
 
 negro. This man was Schneider s country 
 man and fellow-servant, and she had worn 
 his violets, and he had seen them. He was 
 not like Schneider. She knew that as well 
 to-day as she did yesterday ; but it could 
 make no difference so long as he was her 
 father s servant. She was humiliated by 
 his discovery of the interest she had felt in 
 him the day before, and she decided that 
 his immediate dismissal was the only thing 
 that could reinstate her in her own estima 
 tion. 
 
 She had been so occupied with these 
 thoughts that, although looking directly at 
 him, she had not noticed that he was 
 ruthlessly spading up the young seedling 
 verbenas she had intended transplanting. 
 She saw it now and rushed fiercely to the 
 rescue, glad of an opportunity to find 
 fault with another than herself.
 
 84 In " God s Country." 
 
 "You are buryin all my verbenas," 
 she called, in a tone of vexation. 
 
 " W ich is dose ? " he asked humbly, and 
 the voice was irresistibly softening. 
 
 " These with the rough leaves," she 
 replied, taking a trowel, with which she 
 began digging them up out of his way. 
 
 He examined the plant closely, and 
 then with another trowel began digging, 
 and did not attempt to use the spade 
 again until sure there was not another 
 verbena in the bed. 
 
 After this experience she dared not 
 leave him alone in the garden. She 
 stayed by him all day, jealously watching 
 every movement of spade or hoe. He 
 was so obliging, so eager to please, so 
 remorseful for the plants irrecoverably 
 buried, that she could but pardon his 
 ignorance. This was the more easily
 
 In " God s Country." 85 
 
 done as the day wore on, and there was 
 nothing after that one unguarded glance 
 to remind her of the unbecoming interest 
 she had inadvertently betrayed. The pink 
 ribbon was still in view, but after a time 
 she did not notice that. His name was 
 Karl, and she thought it had a pretty 
 sound when he pronounced it. His voice 
 was as winning when he spoke as when he 
 sang. She liked to hear him talk ; and 
 when the irritation of the morning began 
 to wear off, she kept him answering 
 questions, that she might be amused by 
 his doubtful struggle with a strange 
 tongue. The peculiar modulation of his 
 voice, the softening of the consonants, the 
 lingual caress on certain vowels, his odd 
 application of the words themselves, were 
 as ingratiating as the imperfect utterance 
 of a child. Her English was no better
 
 86 In "God s Country." 
 
 than his, though it was different, and she 
 did not have a monopoly of amusement. 
 What he knew of the language he had 
 learned according to the stiff and formal 
 manner of books, and her idioms, her 
 provincialisms, her continual slurring of 
 consonants when she did not drop them 
 altogether, as she invariably did at the 
 end of a word or syllable, the blurring of 
 vowels and the substituting of one vowel 
 sound for another, presented a unique 
 variation of speech that seemed to occupy 
 a middle ground between the language 
 proper and the dialect spoken by the 
 negroes. He wondered whether she would 
 be able to read it were it spelled out to her 
 phonetically, and finally decided that she 
 would not ; but it was not unpleasant to 
 hear as she uttered it, with her soft intona 
 tion and lingering drawl.
 
 In " God s Country." 87 
 
 Karl worked much more briskly than 
 old Dave ; and Lydia, surprised when 
 night came at what he had accomplished, 
 determined to keep him till the end of the 
 week, by which time they might find some 
 one else. She hovered about him contin 
 ually, in the fear of further depredation to 
 her flowers ; but he was so careful, dis 
 played so much energy, such marvellous 
 quickness in learning, so much obliging 
 readiness, and was withal so apparently 
 oblivious of the initial incident of their 
 acquaintance during those days of proba 
 tion, that, when the end of the week came, 
 she had decided that he might stay until 
 the garden was all in. In the first shock 
 of dicosvery she had unduly magnified a 
 circumstance that was beneath her notice. 
 She saw it now in its real significance, 
 which was slight, and she knew it was not
 
 88 In " God s Country r 
 
 likely they would find anyone who would 
 do better than he. There was no telling 
 when old Dave would be well enough 
 to go to work \. he was not worth much at 
 his best; and they were already much 
 behind with the kitchen-garden, which in 
 summer was the principal source of sup 
 ply. 
 
 Lydia s enthusiasm in the culture of 
 flowers amounted to a passion. With most 
 women, flowers are either a sentiment or a 
 decoration. To Lydia they were living 
 things, each one of which had a biography. 
 She knew every plant in her collection 
 intimately, and remembered where and 
 when it had come into her possession. 
 Many of them she had bought at the 
 greenhouses, but there were others which 
 combined the sentimental associations of 
 a souvenir with the zest and pleasure
 
 In "God s Country" 89 
 
 incidental to acquiring a new variety. 
 When presented with a bouquet, she 
 searched it carefully to see if it contained 
 anything she did not have. If it did, the 
 slips were stuck down somewhere to grow. 
 She was remarkably successful, and was 
 proud of her garden, which was her chief 
 occupation and keenest pleasure. It en 
 gaged her to the exclusion of the men 
 agerie of pets upon which girls of her age 
 usually fritter away their time and the 
 emotional activity of adolescence. Its 
 interest could not be fathomed by one 
 ignorant of the subject or less enthusiastic 
 than herself. The fancy was not an inex 
 pensive one ; but her father, who took a 
 pride in denying her nothing that money 
 could procure, humored it as he had once 
 humored a similar fancy in the direction of 
 music. As Lyd s hobby he looked upon
 
 90 In " God s Country" 
 
 it with benign tolerance , but Dave was 
 not so indulgent. He regarded the flower 
 garden as a nuisance and an imposition, 
 since it added to his labors and brought 
 no return that he could appreciate. His 
 indignation, when first informed that he 
 would be expected to attend to it, was 
 boundless ; and though he did not openly 
 rebel he maintained from first to last an 
 attitude of sullen reluctance that was a 
 continual trial to Lydia and acted like a 
 cold compress on her enthusiasm. Noth 
 ing could have recommended the new 
 gardener more effectively than the cheerful 
 activity he displayed in this particular spot, 
 dear to her heart but despised of all men. 
 The sympathy and the ardor he manifested 
 in the pursuit of his occupation were a con 
 tinual surprise and delight to her. She 
 could not understand it. In a community
 
 In " God s Country." 91 
 
 where labor still had all the terror of the 
 primeval curse, it seemed marvellous that 
 a man should take pleasure in anything 
 involving toil. She liked to work in the 
 garden ; but then the flowers were hers, 
 and when she did not want to work she 
 could be idle. It was different with Karl. 
 The vegetable garden claimed a large part 
 of his time, especially as they were a Mttle 
 later than usual getting it in. Some 
 times for several days together he would 
 be engaged there, and if, after he had 
 finished his day s work, she called on him 
 to water the flowers, not without some 
 slight compunction, he responded with a 
 smiling alacrity that almost took her 
 breath. He was never too tired to serve 
 her ; it was never too early in the morning 
 or too late at night for her to command him 
 to the utmost extent of his ability. When
 
 92 In " God s Country" 
 
 she repeatedly changed her mind about 
 the filling of a basket or the laying-off of a 
 bed, he addressed himself to the one- 
 hundreth whim with the same smiling 
 assiduity that had distinguished his first 
 attempt. She had never seen anything 
 like it in her life. It was beyond her com 
 prehension, but it was intensely gratifying; 
 and in addition to its practical value, his 
 willingness had the engaging interest of a 
 new study. She found too that he could 
 talk intelligently about flowers, and that 
 he liked to talk about them. This was a 
 pleasure she had never before enjoyed. 
 She had no means of knowing whether 
 this enthusiasm was real or assumed She 
 could not know that he would have shown 
 the same absorbing interest in pig-iron had 
 she chosen to discuss it with him ; but she 
 did observe that frequently, in an animated
 
 In " God s Country." 93 
 
 debate about a plant or a plan, the arbi 
 trary distinction of mistress and servant 
 seemed to melt away. 
 
 One of Lydia s horticultural triumphs 
 was the fern-bed, which filled the angle 
 formed by the L f the house. Most per 
 sons found ferns difficult to manage, and, 
 after one or two ineffectual attempts to 
 transplant them, gave them up. But Lydia 
 persisted, and finally stumbled on the 
 secret of " leaf-mould " and old roots. 
 The success was not attained without great 
 perseverance and much patient care, and 
 every spring a part of the bed had to be 
 replanted. The ferns grew in abundance 
 along the creek, which was one cf the 
 many branches of the Elkhorn ; and Lydia 
 took the liveliest pleasure in hunting them 
 in the secluded and picturesque nooks 
 among the boldest of the cliffs. Other
 
 94 In " Goal s Country" 
 
 wild things grew along the creek that were 
 equally desirable additions to her ornamen 
 tal baskets, among them the moss with 
 which she lined her wire hanging-baskets, 
 and the trailing ground-ivy that could be 
 used effectively in so many ways. During 
 the spring and summer she made numerous 
 excursions in search of moss and roots, 
 attended by old Dave, who drove the phae 
 ton, carried the baskets, and added the 
 feeling of security only to be provided by 
 the shadow of a human presence to what 
 had in other respects all the charm of a 
 solitary ramble. She enjoyed these trips 
 intensely, but the pleasure was always 
 more or less dashed with compunction for 
 dragging Dave s rheumatic legs over those 
 sharp ledges : and Dave groaned and 
 grunted so continually that she was never 
 for a moment allowed to forget that she
 
 In " God s Country." 95 
 
 was victimizing him in the pursuit of some 
 thing which, when found, was utterly worth 
 less. With Karl it was the reverse : he 
 was delighted to hunt for ferns. Nothing 
 suited him so well. It was clear, though 
 he never gave verbal expression to the sen 
 timent, that no occupation within the com 
 pass of invention was so entirely to his 
 taste. She could go with him where she 
 could not go with Dave, for Dave could 
 not climb over the roughest places, and 
 she was afraid to go alone. Karl was 
 strong and agile, and could assist her over 
 heights she could not climb by herself ; 
 and had she not been too much occupied 
 with other things she would probably have 
 noticed the assiduity with which he 
 searched out such points. Where Dave 
 had dragged his creaking joints laboriously 
 after her, Karl, lithe and agile as a cat,
 
 96 In "God s Country. 1 
 
 went before, making a path by parting the 
 thick branches and holding them while she 
 passed. The number of delicate, unobtru 
 sive attentions with which he made shift to 
 pave the ascent or descent was truly mar 
 vellous, had she paused to consider it. 
 Here in the woods she found it difficult to 
 maintain the strict relation of mistress 
 and servant. Here was a subtle change of 
 attitude defined by no overt act. Away 
 from his tools, his work, and" the dominant 
 thought of servitude, Karl was again a 
 handsome vagabond, who might be a 
 prince in disguise. The servile manner so 
 rigidly observed in the presence of others, 
 here gave place to a knightly courtesy, 
 tinged at times with a boyish audacity that 
 was never pushed to a point where she 
 could afford to resent it. He seemed to 
 know the exact point at which to pause or
 
 In " God s Country." 97 
 
 change his manner. His tact, his facility 
 in retreat, amounted to genius. Her face 
 was an open page, which he read with 
 unfailing accuracy, and he was duly heed 
 ful of its signals. 
 
 She was a well-balanced, self-reliant girl, 
 but there were moments in which she felt 
 that he had her at a disadvantage, when 
 she suspected that his soul was not as 
 guileless as his face, that his arts were 
 many and were deep. They certainly 
 were the more seductive for that infantile 
 imperfection of speech. There were 
 times when the arbitrary convention that 
 separated them seemed flimsier than cob 
 web, lighter than thistledown ; and she felt 
 that, if he chose to whistle it down the 
 wind, she would be powerless to preserve 
 it. She was too clear-headed not to real 
 ize the heightened zest, the exhilaration, 
 7
 
 In " God s Country." 
 
 with which Karl s presence invested 
 these rambles ; and she had no sooner 
 admitted it to herself than she began to 
 beat up a reason. She found one, and 
 it was not only very simple but perfectly 
 satisfactory : it was because Karl was so 
 much more active and willing than Dave, 
 and with him she could go to so many 
 places inaccessible to her before.
 
 V. 
 
 THE gardener and Schneider were the 
 only white hands on the place. When the 
 latter first came they did not know just 
 what to do with him. He could not of 
 course lodge in the Colonel s house, 
 though it was ample and almost empty. 
 He was finally bestowed in the "fur 
 cabin," the last of the line of low log 
 rooms that had served as negro quarters in 
 slave time. The local prejudice in favor 
 of a white skin had obtained for him some 
 concessions in the shape of additional 
 furniture, and Meriky, the house girl, had 
 been told that she was to look after the 
 room , but from the time of his moving 
 in, nobody at the house had given a 
 99
 
 ioo In " God s Country" 
 
 thought to Schneider or his lodging ; and 
 Meriky, with the supreme disdain of her 
 race for "po white trash," ignored the 
 order without scruple, affirming with many 
 scornful sniffs and tosses that she " wan t 
 gwine to wait on no white nigga." 
 
 One afternoon, about two weeks after 
 the arrival of Karl, Lydia chanced to pass 
 by the cabin, the door of which was open. 
 The bed was unmade, the floor unswept, 
 and the room had a shocking appearance 
 of squalor and untidiness. 
 
 " I declare it s a shame ; Meriky ought 
 to ten to this cabin ; an she must," said 
 Lydia, mortified by the knowledge that 
 any white person had been so lodged on 
 her father s place. 
 
 As she passed the window she saw two 
 oooks lying on the table near it. The 
 *ext was German, but she could see that it
 
 /;/ " God s Country" 101 
 
 was verse, and could make out on the 
 respective title-pages the names of Heine 
 and Goethe. There was no name on 
 the fly-leaves to indicate the ownership, 
 but she was sure they were Karl s. She 
 picked up one of them, and as she care 
 lessly turned it over a bunch of violets 
 tied with a blade of grass dropped out. 
 
 It had not before occurred to her that 
 Schneider suffered any indignity in being 
 thus bestowed ; even now she thought that, 
 with a thorough overhauling, the place 
 might be made habitable for him : but 
 she felt that his countryman was entitled 
 to something better, and she was in 
 spired with a bold resolve to move him 
 into the room over the kitchen, which 
 had never been used for anything and was 
 conveniently accessible by the stairway 
 leading up from the back porch.
 
 102 In " God s Country : j 
 
 That afternoon she marshalled three 
 negro women into the large, low-ceiled, 
 barn-like room over the kitchen, which was 
 speedily swept, scoured, and furnished 
 with articles excavated from the lumber 
 room. A splendid mahogany bedstead 
 with elaborately carved posts towered in 
 one corner ; a quaint claw-foot bureau, that 
 like the bedstead had retired before newer 
 fancies in furniture, kept it company ; and 
 a washstand was improvised from a 
 rosewood table, whose cracked slab of 
 Egyptian marble had condemned it to 
 banishment in the dim regions of the attic. 
 The collection of odd chairs, the furniture 
 belonging to different periods, the green 
 Venetian blinds at the windows, gave the 
 room a bizarre appearance. Lydia 
 thought it looked very much like a lumber 
 room, but it was better than the cabin,
 
 In " God s Country." 103 
 
 and it was near enough for her to see that 
 Meriky attended to it properly. 
 
 That night, as Karl proceeded to move 
 his belongings, consisting of the two books 
 and a small bundle of clothing, from the 
 cabin to the house, Schneider, after look 
 ing at him stolidly for a moment, asked, 
 " You vas bromoded, ain d ud ?" 
 
 Karl nodded, and as he turned his back 
 on the cabin and crossed the moonlit 
 stretch of lawn that lay between it and 
 the house, Schneider shook his head 
 solemnly, and added, " Somepody elz haf 
 vound you oud already." 
 
 The house had two long porches facing 
 east and west, which enabled Lydia to 
 follow the shadow on warm days. The 
 east porch led directly into the garden, 
 and here, through the long afternoon", 
 as she sat with her novel or her embroid-
 
 iO4 In " God s Country," 
 
 ery, she could see the gardener at his 
 work, hear him humming softly to himself 
 as he scraped the earthen walks or 
 trimmed the bluegrass borders of the 
 flower-beds. She was often moved to ask 
 him to sing again the song that still 
 haunted her, but she never did, and she 
 could not tell why she did not. In spite of 
 his steady application to work, his growing 
 efficiency, his habitual attitude of defer 
 ence, he was an embarrassing element. 
 Unaccustomed to the service of white 
 people, she experienced a hesitancy in 
 giving orders that was absent from her 
 intercourse with the negroes. Many 
 services rendered by Dave she could not 
 exact of Karl ; and whenever she found 
 herself manoeuvring to save him from the 
 more menial offices of his position, s*he 
 reflected with a twinge of mortification
 
 In " God s Country." 105 
 
 that she was exhibiting an undue interest 
 in her father s servant. The feeling would 
 have been the same toward any white 
 person in the station her education and 
 prejudices inclined her to regard as the 
 exclusive heritage of the negro. In the 
 case of Karl it was the more pronounced 
 because she had seen him first in the 
 light of an interesting vagabond, bearing 
 himself with the chivalric reverence of 
 a knight-errant. She had at times an 
 uneasy sense of being open to his criticism. 
 She never attempted to sing when he was 
 near; she seldom sang at all. After the 
 mellow resonance of his voice, her own 
 sounded thin and weak. She felt in a 
 vague way that he was capable of com 
 paring her with some standard of which 
 she had no conception, and it annoyed 
 her. She realized to some extent how
 
 106 In "God s Country." 
 
 far his knowledge of the world, of every 
 thing, exceeded her own, and it irritated 
 her beyond measure. She felt, though she 
 did not admit it, that in some respects 
 he was superior to many men she recog 
 nized as equals ; but the same fine intui 
 tion that discovered this superiority showed 
 her that it could not be made apparent to 
 anyone else. As she was the only one of 
 the family who came in contact with him, 
 she was the only one to discover what her 
 father would have been slow to detect 
 in any case the intangible charm she felt 
 but could not define. The qualities that 
 contributed to it would not commend him 
 to the regard of those around her. To 
 the men of her acquaintance he would not 
 seem more worthy because he loved flow 
 ers, read Heine, of whom they knew noth 
 ing, sang divinely, and handled the guitar
 
 In "God s Country." 107 
 
 with inimitable grace. Any one of his 
 accomplishments would be sufficient to 
 condemn him in the eyes of those who 
 would consider them not only trivial, but 
 unmanly, and she was secretly chagrined 
 that she had found them admirable. 
 
 Dinner was just over, and Colonel Ran- 
 some, on the eve of his second toilet for 
 the da) , went first to one window then to 
 another, scanning the premises for a loiter 
 ing negro, but found none. He called 
 several times, loudly and in rapid succes 
 sion, but there was no response. " It s 
 come to a pretty pass," he complained, 
 " when a man keeps a whole brigade of 
 black devils round him and can t find one 
 to black his shoes." He came out upon 
 the east porch, and was pacing helplessly 
 up and down, with the shoes in his hana, 
 when Karl came through the garden gaic-
 
 io8 In "God s Country." 
 
 "Here, Karl," he called, "black my 
 shoes, quick." 
 
 Miss Ransome, still in the dining-room, 
 where she was serving the allowance of 
 sugar and butter for the negroes, and put 
 ting the remainder safe under lock and 
 key, heard the order, and started as from 
 the stroke of a lash. She went to the 
 kitchen door and found Tom, who had fin 
 ished his dinner, asleep, with his head in 
 his plate. 
 
 " Tom," she called, " come here this 
 minute and black yuh Mahs Wick s shoes." 
 
 On her way back to the dining-room she 
 passed Karl, who had already picked up 
 the shoes, and was looking for the blacking 
 in the closet under the stairway. 
 
 " Put em down," she said, angrily. 
 "You can hitch up the pha ton, an I ll go 
 after those ferns this evenin " (afternoon).
 
 In " God s Country" 109 
 
 The phaeton was soon ready, and they 
 drove silently down the avenue, across the 
 pike, and into a lane bordered with a close 
 growth of locust and fragrant feathery 
 sprays of elder-bloom. Karl would always 
 remember the avenue as it looked on the 
 day he entered it a beggar before he had 
 dreamed of the supreme bliss of driving 
 through the shady byways of " God s 
 Country " with the most beautiful woman 
 his eyes had ever beheld. What if she 
 did not know how he adored her ? What 
 if she did despise him for his coarse 
 clothes, but most of all for the service to 
 herself, in the rendering of which he found 
 his keenest pleasure ? What if the preju 
 dice and bigotry that were hers by inheri 
 tance and education kept her blind to the 
 truth ? kept her fighting against the influ 
 ence she felt but could not understand ?
 
 no In "God s Country." 
 
 What if she saw only the uncouth attire of 
 him whose soul was exhaled before her 
 daily in the priceless incense of a passion 
 that exacted nothing ? It could not abate 
 one vibration of the exquisite emotion that 
 thrilled him as he looked out over the 
 green fields, felt the breath of heaven on 
 his face, and revelled in the exhilarating 
 contact of Lydia s dress, or trembled at the 
 light, accidental touch of her arm or shoul 
 der as the vehicle bounded over the un 
 even road. He knew that in the autumn 
 she was to marry the handsome young fel 
 low whose amiable arrogance he thought 
 detestable ; but he did not allow that event 
 to thrust its gaunt shadow into the present, 
 which was his. They drove through a 
 mile of lane and across a field of purple 
 clover, to the bluff that overhung the 
 creek, where they hitched the horse.
 
 In " God s Country" in 
 
 Lydia had not spoken since they started, 
 and Karl saw that the wind was in the 
 east, but he did not know why it had 
 shifted. Lydia was in a tempestuous state 
 of mind. Why had she interfered about 
 those shoes ? She was beginning to fear 
 that in the shock of surprise at her father s 
 order she had shown more feeling than 
 was necessary or becoming. She won 
 dered if Karl had noticed it, and how he 
 would construe it. As usual, she saw fit to 
 counteract the effect of any trivial kindness 
 she had shown him, by a lofty remoteness 
 of demeanor. She understood the diffi 
 culty of carrying out the determination in 
 this particular spot understood that it 
 would spoil the afternoon for herself as 
 well as for him ; but she was none the less 
 resolved. She began by ignoring the path 
 he opened for her as usual, and struck out
 
 In "God s Country." 
 
 in mother direction, though the formation 
 of the cliff was such that they could at no 
 point in the descent be more than three 
 feet apart. At the bottom of the precipice 
 the creek unfolded itself like a green rib 
 bon, between white ledges of limestone ; 
 and deep down, where perpetual twilight 
 brooded, lay the dim, cool regions of moss 
 and fern. From the midst of the dusky 
 solitude the white arms of a sycamore, now 
 hidden, now revealed, by the waving of 
 boughs, shone like the gleaming limbs of a 
 dryad vanishing coyly at their approach. 
 The thicket was alive with the brush of 
 wings, and vocal with the reed choir of 
 the woods. The place was unspeakably 
 lovely in the green luxuriance of full foli 
 age, but she carried with her a jarring 
 thought that made her indifferent to its 
 beauty. It was probably owing to the
 
 In "God s Country." 113 
 
 vexation incidental to the inopportune 
 necessity for making herself disagreeable 
 that she walked so absently, and over 
 looked the grape-vine upon which she 
 tripped. Karl turned, and stayed her with 
 his hand, but they both slipped from the 
 path, borne on by the impetus of her fall. 
 It was impossible to be imposing or lofty 
 to a man who held her suspended over a 
 chasm, and Lydia felt her dignity melting 
 like thin ice. The descent was very abrupt, 
 the mould soft and treacherous, and they 
 could not stand in one place long enough 
 to get an advantageous start. They were 
 still slipping, when Karl caught her with 
 one arm and grasped the limb of a tree 
 with the other hand. For an instant she 
 felt nis breath upon her face, and then she 
 was being whirled, carried bodily, down the 
 
 steep bluff. She was not thinking of the 
 8
 
 H4 In " God s Country." 
 
 descent or its perils. She was conscious 
 only of the contact ; her head was dizzy 
 and her veins ran fire. It was but an in 
 stant. It was like a flash. They reached 
 the bottom with no more serious injury 
 than a few scratches, and lit upon their 
 feet. Lydia was trembling violently, and 
 for her life she could not look at Karl. 
 He stood beside her, thrilling with the re 
 membrance of that embrace, the more de 
 licious because of the danger that attended 
 it. She did not speak, and the face that 
 would have been a revelation to him was 
 hidden by the sun-bonnet. To Lydia the 
 sensation was altogether new, and it was as 
 unfathomable as it was unfamiliar. It 
 seemed in some vague way connected with 
 the strange spell that always settled down 
 upon them at the edge of this sylvan soli 
 tude, where the coercive energy of nature
 
 In " God s Country." 115 
 
 thrust out all arbitrary distinctions and 
 brought her face to face with something 
 feared and yet desired. Karl, uncertain of 
 her mood, was discreetly silent. They 
 worked for an hour in the cool, fragrant 
 dusk of the ravine, with the ribbon of water 
 below and the ribbon of sky above. The 
 longer they kept silent the harder it was to 
 speak ; and when at last Karl announced 
 that the baskets were full, his voice 
 sounded unfamiliar to Lydia, but it broke 
 the spell and brought her back to the level 
 of the commonplace. They started home 
 immediately, not tarrying for the usual 
 stroll after the baskets were filled. There 
 were more baskets than Karl could carry 
 at once, and rather than wait to send him 
 back, she took up the smallest one herself. 
 She found it heavier than she expected, 
 and, when half-way up the cliff, sank on a
 
 n6 In " God s Country." 
 
 ledge to rest. Karl followed her example. 
 The cliff was much lower on the other side 
 of the creek at this point, and the view 
 commanded a wide, sun-flooded plateau, 
 carved into fantastic arabesques by the 
 erratic windings of the Elkhorn. The 
 shadows of flying clouds chased each other 
 over golden billows of wheat and barley 
 and far-reaching fields of dark, luxuriant 
 hemp that broke into a thousand whirling 
 eddies at the touch of every breeze. 
 
 A soft, luminous blue mist floated like a 
 gauze streamer along the watercourse, and 
 hovered over the slight depressions in the 
 land ; and the deserted log cabin standing 
 in the midst of the stretch of purple clover 
 in the creek bottom looked like some rude 
 craft afloat on a sea of amethyst. The 
 shrill bird chorus was pierced by occa 
 sional bursts of song as the ambitious solo
 
 In "God s Country. 117 
 
 of the mocking-bird rose in a succession of 
 imitative phrases, and joined now and then 
 by the plaintive contralto note of the dove 
 calling across the field behind them. 
 Down at the creek s edge a negro woman 
 was hanging up the weekly wash, and from 
 under the kettles fluttered up the blue, 
 odorous smoke of a wood fire. After it 
 soared a voice powerful, penetrating, and 
 slightly nasal, but not unpleasant, bearing 
 upward the burden of a favorite plantation 
 hymn : 
 
 " I se gwyne home to glory, don t you grieve arter 
 
 me, 
 I se gwyne home to glory, don t you grieve arter 
 
 me, 
 I se gwyne home to glory, don t you grieve arter 
 
 me ; 
 Ca se I do want you to grieve arter me." 
 
 She sang with power and earnestness, 
 and no combination of intervals could
 
 n8 In " God s Country r 
 
 convey an adequate impression of her 
 treatment of that final " me, which she 
 prolonged indefinitely, ornamented with 
 innumerable shakes and appoggiaturas, 
 held aloft in a piercing tremulo, and 
 finally, when breath was exhausted, heaved 
 upward with a jerk. 
 
 A light breeze blew over them, bringing 
 with it the clean, strong, penetrating smell 
 of hemp. Karl took off his hat and drew 
 in a deep breath. 
 
 " You are right to call it God s country," 
 he said. " It is beautiful ; it is like Para 
 dise." 
 
 Lydia had taken off the sun-bonnet to 
 which he so objected, and was fanning her 
 self with it vigorously. Her eyes were 
 fixed on a distant point in the landscape, 
 and her face was stamped with the apa 
 thetic calm of a reactive mood.
 
 In "God s Country: 119 
 
 Karl scanned it intently, but for once 
 could make nothing of it. It neither en 
 couraged nor repelled him. 
 
 Presently he said in an absent way, as il 
 to nobody in particular, " I am glad I found 
 God s country. Dis is de happies summer 
 I did effer know." 
 
 Lydia turned, and looked down at him 
 curiously. He was lying on his back look 
 ing up at the strip of sky, and his eyes re 
 flected its deep, luminous blue. His face 
 wore that bland and guileless expression 
 so impossible to construe with certainty. 
 Was he joking ? If this was the happiest 
 summer he had ever known, what must his 
 life have been ? His visible vestments 
 were a shirt of unbleached cotton, a pair ot 
 blue-cotton trousers, coarse but clean, and 
 a pair of calfskin shoes. How could any 
 body be happy like that ? If thb was
 
 120 In "God s Country." 
 
 happiness, she was more curious thar ^ver 
 to know what his life had been. She was 
 moved to ask him a question that had long 
 been at the tip of her tongue : 
 
 " What did you do in your own coun 
 try?" 
 
 Karl replied that, when not wandering 
 about, he had been in the army. 
 
 Her eyes brightened : if he had been a 
 soldier, that was not so bad. 
 
 " Did you like being in the army ? " 
 
 " No," he answered, simply, " de disci 
 pline is ve y strict." 
 
 " How came you to join the army ? " 
 
 He replied that every man in his country 
 had to serve a certain length of time, 
 whether he liked it or not. 
 
 There had always been lurking in her 
 mind a suspicion that in his own country 
 his position had been different from what
 
 In " God s Country." 121 
 
 it was here. He certainly was not like 
 Schneider, and she had fancied that at 
 home he might at least have been a gentle 
 man ; but as he answered her questions 
 the last vestige of the illusion she had en 
 tertained vanished like a faint odor in a 
 gale. If this was the happiest summer he 
 had ever known, he could not have been 
 any better off in his own country ; and the 
 man who was not a fighter from instinct 
 and a soldier from choice was less than a 
 man to her. How could he prefer this to 
 being in the army ? He had probably de 
 serted ; that was why he was an exile. 
 Never again would she find a peg upon 
 which to hang a romantic possibility. She 
 looked down upon him as he lay there gaz 
 ing up into the sky ; and he was so pitiably 
 content, so egregiously happy, that she 
 hated him. She turned impatiently away
 
 In " God s Country." 
 
 from a spectacle so irritating, and leaned 
 over the ledge to look into the chasm. 
 Half-way down the side of the cliff, which 
 was almost perpendicular, some pale-blue 
 flowers waved from a crevice in the rock. 
 She had never seen any like them before, 
 though she had been so often to the place, 
 and they roused the interest that nothing 
 else could have stimulated at that moment. 
 
 " Look there ! " she exclaimed, impul 
 sively ; " I wonder what they are like when 
 you get close to em ? What a pity they 
 are jus where we can t get at em from 
 above or below ! " 
 
 From the point where they sat to the 
 bed of the creek was a sheer drop of sev 
 enty-five feet, and the cliff, though covered 
 with a scant vegetation that found a foot 
 hold in the crevices of rock, was too nearly 
 straight to climb ; and the flowers, inacces-
 
 In " God s Country." 123 
 
 sible from any direction, nodded gayly in 
 exasperating security. 
 
 " I do wish I had some of em," said 
 Lydia, earnestly, the more eager because 
 they were so entirely out of reach. 
 
 Karl leaned over the edge. " Dose blue 
 ones ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, with the long stems. Ain t they 
 lovely ? " 
 
 He reached out and caught the top of a 
 supple young sapling that grew in a crevice 
 below them, and before she had tinished 
 the question he had swung himself over 
 the ledge. 
 
 The drop almost took her breath. With 
 bloodless face she leaned over the edge, 
 straining her eyes for a glimpse of him. In 
 a second the sapling came whizzing back 
 to its place, lashing the intervening brusa 
 tremendously, almost striking her >n the
 
 124 / " God s Country." 
 
 face. Below there was a similar snapping 
 of branches that filled her with terror. 
 With the fascination of horror, she leaned 
 over and looked again. Far below she saw 
 him swinging by a limb, working himself 
 back and forth toward the cranny from 
 which the flowers seemed to beckon deri 
 sively. The first time he did not reach 
 them by two feet ; the next time he got 
 nearer; the third time he touched the rock 
 but missed the prize, and Lydia, straining 
 her eyes through the brush, could see that 
 the root of the young tree by which he 
 swung was yielding. He did not see the 
 danger, and she could not call to him, she 
 was so paralyzed with fear He was swing 
 ing toward the rock for the fourth time 
 but she could look no longer. She drew 
 back and listened breathlessly for what 
 seemed an age. Deep in the ravine she
 
 In " God s Country." 125 
 
 heard a pheasant drumming ; the dove 
 called across the wood ; the negro woman 
 at the creek s edge rang out the vociferous 
 " Don t you grieve arter me," which all at 
 once seemed to take on a sinister meaning 
 and then the crash came. 
 
 She turned suddenly cold and sick, and 
 a black curtain fell between her and the 
 landscape. 
 
 Meanwhile Karl, who had in the nick 
 of time seized another sapling, and thus 
 achieved a safe but precipitous descent, 
 was leisurely climbing back to the top. 
 Several minutes elapsed while Lydia lay 
 pale and unconscious ; then the cool wind 
 blowing on her face revived her. She sat 
 up feebly, and was just beginning to re 
 member why she had fainted, and that in 
 the ravine below lay the mangled remains 
 of Karl, when she looked up and saw him
 
 126 In "God s Country >" 
 
 so close to her that she could have touched 
 him. The transition from sickening ter 
 ror to infinite relief, to something more 
 than relief, was so sudden and so violent 
 that Karl was thrilled by both in the same 
 instant. The deadly fear, the joyful light 
 that burned in her eyes a moment later, 
 were alike for him. His own face reflected 
 the glow of hers ; it shone with a new light, 
 eager, intense. For a moment they looked 
 at each other ; then he asked, " Were you 
 frightened ? " 
 
 The question came softly and with just 
 the touch of tenderness sufficient to betray 
 his thought. Her face changed instantly. 
 
 "It was enough to frighten anybody," 
 she replied. " And what a perfec ly ridic 
 ulous thing it was to do ! " 
 
 He held out the blue flowers mutely and 
 with a penitent face.
 
 In " God s Country." 127 
 
 She hesitated a moment, then took them 
 and stuck them carelessly in her belt. He 
 was safe now and she could afford to be 
 rigorous. 
 
 On the way home she sat up rigidly in 
 the phaeton and did not speak to him, and 
 bitterly resented the fact that Karl, though 
 silent and thoughtful, seemed oblivious of 
 her displeasure. 
 
 That night in the room over the kitchen 
 a young man, with head bared to the 
 caress of the fragrant summer breeze, 
 leaned out of the small square window into 
 the moonlight and hummed snatches of a 
 melody in the intervals of a fragmentary 
 soliloquy. " Her face was glorious," he 
 was saying. " She lofes me and she 
 despises herself. She will be very haugh 
 ty very grand, now for a long time. It is 
 curious, dis pride, dis grand air. In dis
 
 128 In " God s Country." 
 
 country dey say all people are de same, but 
 it is not so. Because I wear dese clothes 
 and dig in her garden, she despises me. 
 It is very funny, dese Americans. I might 
 despise her, but I don t. But I hate him. 
 He ink de world was made for him. 
 He is a conceited jackanape." 
 
 In the white-curtained room at the front 
 of the house sat Lydia, rocking vigorously, 
 looking out upon the moonlit garden, glanc 
 ing occasionally at the window at the end 
 of the porch, upon the sill of which she 
 thought a head rested. She too was think 
 ing of the incident of the afternoon. She 
 was unable to guess how Karl had man 
 aged to reach the bottom of the cliff alive, 
 but she would not have betrayed so much 
 interest as would be involved in direct 
 inquiry. She remembered how his face 
 looked as it lit up suddenly with that eager
 
 In " God s Country" 129 
 
 k*ow. How dare he look at her like that ? 
 How soft his voice was, how full of tender 
 concern, as he asked if she were fright 
 ened ! " What impudence ! " And that 
 mad dash over the cliff ! No other man 
 she knew could or would have done it. It 
 reminded her of that old legend of the 
 knight, the lions, and the lady s glove. It 
 certainly was absurd. It was impertinent, 
 if she chose to so consider it ; but it was 
 deliciously reckless, and it was flattering to 
 the point of intoxication. She had pro 
 ceeded to crush him instantly, as she 
 always did when he presumed ; but in the 
 present instance there was an annoying 
 sense of incompleteness. She feared that 
 this time she had not done it effectively. 
 She flushed as she recalled that headlong 
 rush they had taken down the bluff, and 
 the sensation that accompanied it, deli-
 
 130 In " God s Country: 
 
 cious and yet full of vague terror ; and a 
 thrill that was like the echo of it passed 
 over her. The odorous wind that came in 
 from the garden bore to her fragments of a 
 plaintive melody, and presently, for no rea 
 son that she could assign, her head 
 drooped upon the high, old-fashioned sill 
 of the window and she began to cry softly.
 
 VI. 
 
 A NOTED Kentucky turfman who late in 
 life sought refuge in the bosom of the 
 Church was frequently heard to remark, 
 with the moisture of deep feeling in his 
 eyes, that he confidently expected to run 
 his favorite thoroughbred in the green 
 pastures of the hereafter. It is not improb 
 able that the indifference of his class to 
 the consolations of religion and the prom 
 ises of a future life is due to the absence of 
 the simple faith upon which the General s 
 blissful anticipation reposed. Were heav 
 en an interminable boulevard, and the 
 transportation of horses assured, no Ken- 
 tuckian would miss it, though convinced 
 that it lay through a prohibition district.
 
 132 In " God s Country." 
 
 Other men own horses, drive them, admire 
 their beauty, glory in their speed; but 
 nowhere outside of an Arabian legend is a 
 horse the object of so much affectionate 
 solicitude, so nearly a part of its owner s 
 being, as in Kentucky. A Kentuckian 
 may be conceived of without his title ; he 
 may exist without an imposing pedigree; a 
 bold flight of the imagination may even 
 picture him without his morning toddy ; 
 but without his horse he is impossible. 
 The buggy is the vehicle with which he is 
 inseparably identified. " Buggy-riding " is 
 his chief amusement. The buggy is to him 
 at the same time what the gondola is to the 
 Venetian, and the guitar to the Spaniard 
 the chief means of locomotion and the 
 prime promoter of his love affairs. It is 
 Uie object about which all the tender and 
 romantic associations of the country cling;
 
 In " God s Country." 133 
 
 the supreme opportunity of lovers the 
 resort in which two souls, under fairly 
 favorable conditions, are speedily reduced 
 to the elementary substance of a single 
 thought. Its advantages can only be fully 
 appreciated by those who have enjoyed 
 them ; but the security from intrusion, 
 which is one of them, will be readily appre 
 ciated by the most obtuse. To the sense 
 of possession induced by the nearness of 
 the beloved object and the absence of 
 other people is added that keen exhilara 
 tion that comes of rapid motion without 
 effort, when one seems to cleave the air as 
 with the wings of a bird. The lover who 
 possesses a horse and buggy does not sigh 
 for the wings of a dove, and the one wru 
 does not is practically out of the race if his 
 rival is fully equipped. Whether he Is 
 speeding like a -shaft along the smooth,
 
 134 I* " God s Country." 
 
 white turnpike in the sunlit glory of a per 
 fect day, cutting the mellow radiance of a 
 moonlit night, or loitering idly through 
 some flowery lane in the warm, odorous 
 twilight of a summer evening, employing 
 the interval as fate or feeling may dictate, 
 he is equally blessed. He has with him 
 at the same moment the two things dearest 
 on earth, without which heaven is void of 
 attraction his sweetheart and his horse. 
 
 It was the first week in July, and the 
 afternoon, though breezy, was hot. Lydia 
 had an engagement to drive, or, as she 
 would have phrased it, " to ride," with Bev 
 erly, who a few days before had matched 
 the bay trotter that had been for some time 
 his especial pride. The drive, which was a 
 formal dedication of the new possession to 
 the divinity he adored, was the last thej 
 would take together for a considerable
 
 In " God s Country." 135 
 
 time, for, as Beverly frequently declared 
 with an air of outraged proprietorship, he 
 " never got to look at Lyd after the guests 
 arrived." 
 
 At the appointed hour he came spinning 
 down the avenue, the flawless varnish of his 
 buggy reflecting the sunlight from a mil 
 lion angles at once. Three negroes idling 
 in the stable lot turned at the sound of 
 wheels, and, recognizing Beverly, engaged 
 in a frantic foot-race for the privilege of 
 holding the horses, with an eye to the tip 
 that would be forthcoming at the end of 
 the vigil. Beverly, resplendent in a pair of 
 white marseilles trousers that fitted like the 
 fresco to a ceiling, a vest of the same mate 
 rial cut low enough to expose three dia 
 mond studs, a white cravat, a dark cloth 
 coat, and a soft felt hat of a light color, 
 sprang out of the vehicle and walked into
 
 136 In " God s Country." 
 
 the house with the manner of one quite at 
 home. In the hall he met Meriky. 
 
 "Meriky, go see if yuh Miss Lyd s 
 ready," he ordered, and than went out on 
 the porch to wait. In a few minutes the 
 Colonel came around the corner of the house, 
 blowing from the fatigue of a short walk. 
 He wore a suit of ecru linen minus the coat, 
 freshly laundered and stiffly starched, and a 
 broad-brimmed panama hat of the finest 
 braid. As he edged into the shadow he 
 took off his hat and mopped out the lining 
 with a flowered silk handkerchief, which he 
 returned to the bosom of his waistcoat. 
 
 " Hello, Bev." 
 
 " Good evenin , Kunnel." 
 
 " Whew, but it s hot ! " exclaimed the 
 Colonel, as he came up the steps. " Is 
 that yuh new trotter ? " he asked, as the 
 two shook hands.
 
 In " God s Country." 137 
 
 "Yes," replied Beverly; "don t you 
 think it s a splendid match ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is. I can t tell which is wtuch 
 from here. I ll go an take a look at em 
 d rectly. My stars ! but I m tired," he 
 groaned, as he sank into a chair. 
 
 " Where ve you been ? " asked Bev. 
 
 " I ve been to the creek pahsture to look 
 at a filly that got hurt yesterday, an I m 
 about used up." 
 
 Outside a community laboring under the 
 delusion that a man cannot move on less 
 than four feet, it would have appeared that 
 the Colonel s weariness was absurdly out 
 of proportion to his exertion ; but they 
 were men of one mind, and Bev merely 
 inquired whether there was anything the 
 matter with the gray mare. 
 
 Meriky now appeared with the message 
 that Miss Liddy would be ready in a minute.
 
 138 Jn " God s Country." 
 
 " Have a julip while you are waitin, 
 Rev ? " asked Colonel. 
 
 " B lieve I will, Kunnel." 
 
 Colonel Ransome walked to the end of 
 the porch, near which a dark mass of rags 
 and glistening black limbs was tumbling 
 about on the grass. 
 
 "Mose! Elic! Gabe ! " he called, in 
 quick succession. 
 
 At the sound of his voice the shapeless 
 mass was instantly resolved into three 
 small negroes, who sprang up and came 
 toward him with that cunning assumption 
 of awe that is one of the many wiles of the 
 race. 
 
 " Mose, you black vilyun, run to the 
 branch an get some mint quick." 
 
 Mose started off at a tangent, his bare 
 black legs revolving around his diminutive 
 person like spokes around the hub of a wheel.
 
 In " God s Country." 139 
 
 " Gabe, you go tell Meriky to bring 
 some cracked ice an some glasses." 
 Gabe flew in another direction. 
 
 " Elic, run that chicken out yuh Miss 
 Lyddy s flower-bed, an then go back to the 
 cabin where you b long. I ll whale the 
 life out o you black devils if you don t 
 keep off my grass." 
 
 Elic sped after the chicken unimpressed 
 by a threat so remote, indefinite, and alto 
 gether doubtful of fulfilment. 
 
 "The varments are as thick on this 
 place as toadstools after a rain," said the 
 Colonel, coming back to his chair. "It s 
 worse n slave-time. I ll swear I do know 
 where they come from." 
 
 "The worst of it is," remarked Bev, 
 " they eat just as much as the grown ones, 
 and they are no earthly account." 
 
 " Well, I don t begrudge any of em
 
 140 In "God s Country." 
 
 what they can hold ; but it does rile me to 
 see them that s old enough eat my victuals 
 all the year roun an then vote the Re 
 publican ticket every chance they get." 
 
 " It ain t what they eat as much as what 
 they steal, that aggravates me. If you 
 want to eat spring chicken you ve got to 
 set under the hen-roost all night with a 
 shot-gun ; an you just can t keep a water 
 melon ; I ve given that up. I d rather 
 buy what I want than bother with keepin 
 the niggers out of the patch. As far as 
 the votin s concerned, I s pose it is only 
 natural they should vote with the party 
 that freed em ; but it s tough on us." 
 
 "What s their freedom wuth to em?" 
 queried the Colonel, explosively. " They 
 are a million times wuss off a million 
 times raggecler, dirtier, lazier than they ve 
 ever been since the first ship-load of the
 
 In " God s Country r 141 
 
 damned war-breedin devils was landed at 
 Jamestown. Freedom ! " finished the Col 
 onel, in a burst of bitterness. 
 
 "I know," replied Bev, soothingly, "but 
 they can t see it that way. They can steal 
 as much as they want now without gettin 
 thrashed, an that s wuth a good deal to 
 em. Their bein free wouldn t make so 
 much difference after all if we could only 
 get rid of em an forget how it was done." 
 
 " Don t, Bev," said the Colonel, redden 
 ing, "don t get me started on that to-day; 
 it s too hot." 
 
 Here Meriky appeared with the waiter 
 containing the ice and the glasses, and a 
 moment later the penetrating odor of 
 bruised mint heralded the approach of 
 Mose. The Colonel took a bunch of keys 
 from his trousers pocket, and produced 
 from the long, narrow closet in the dining-
 
 142 In " God s Country." 
 
 room a cut-glass decanter half full of an 
 amber-brown liquid that ran like oil. Bev 
 erly was full of fresh turf gossip, which he 
 reeled off gayly for the Colonel s entertain 
 ment as they sipped their julep. 
 
 When the elastic feminine minute had 
 stretched to half an hour, Lydia appeared 
 on the porch in a dress of white muslin, 
 soft and voluminous of drapery, with a 
 superabundance of sash that, as she 
 moved, rose and floated behind her like a 
 cloud. The leghorn hat with brim fantas 
 tically bent, framed her face picturesquely. 
 The crown of it was lost in vaporous 
 wreaths of tulle, and over the brim fell a 
 streamer of the same material that encir 
 cled her pearly throat and dropped forward 
 over the cluster of Jacqueminot roses that 
 burned against her breast, veiling them 
 daintily as with a mist of dew. With her
 
 In " God s Country" 143 
 
 complexion, without the roses the toilet 
 would have been cold and meaningless; 
 with that dash of color, softened by the 
 film of tulle, it was radiant and warm with 
 life. That last touch embodied the poetic 
 inspiration of an acutely feminine tempera 
 ment that marks the distinction between 
 mere clothes and a sentiment expressed in 
 fabrics. 
 
 The effect upon Bev was simply stun 
 ning. It seemed that a cool, fleecy cloud 
 had floated down to his feet from some 
 region of perpetual snow a cloud pene 
 trated by one palpitating, rosy gleam, from 
 the midst of which looked out at him the 
 fairest, freshest, brightest face he had ever 
 seen. There was more intoxication in one 
 glance of her gold-brown eyes than was 
 imprisoned in an entire bonded warehouse. 
 The impulse to gather her into a quick,
 
 144 / " God s Country r 
 
 crushing hug was so sudden and so over 
 powering that it was barely quelled by the 
 presence of the Colonel. It subsided ulti 
 mately into a consuming desire to melt 
 into a tulle streamer. 
 
 " Have some, Lyd ? " asked her father, 
 referring to the contents of the decanter. 
 
 " It s mos too hot for julip," replied 
 Lydia, "but you may gi me a little with 
 lots o ice an plenty o sugah." 
 
 Beverly set down his own glass and pro 
 ceeded to mix the tipple according to direc 
 tions. 
 
 When the glasses were emptied, all three 
 sauntered down to the gate, where Bev s 
 purchase was minutely examined and ex 
 haustively discussed in the technical lan 
 guage of the turf. Then Bev assisted 
 Lydia into the shining vehicle, mounted 
 after her, and took up the reins with that
 
 /// " God s Country." 145 
 
 rapturous enthusiasm a Kentuckian only 
 feels behind a pair of flyers he believes 
 can beat anything on the road. The 
 horses, satin-coated, clean-limbed, bright- 
 eyed, groomed to the most exquisite polish, 
 and proudly conscious of their owner s 
 pride in them, stepped out daintily, dis 
 daining the earth, curveting coquettishly 
 until the firm hand on the rein brought 
 them down to a steady, even trot that 
 quickened until team, vehicle, the two fig 
 ures, the dangling legs of the small darky 
 that had caught on behind to open the gate 
 melted into a single winged thing that 
 seemed to skim the elastic turf of the ave 
 nue with the speed of a swallow. The top 
 was down, and as the buggy rolled out into 
 the road its course was marked by Lydia s 
 red parasol waving aloft like a gigantic 
 
 poppy. 
 10
 
 146 In " God s Country." 
 
 " Bev will split the pike wide open this 
 evenin , remarked the Colonel, with a 
 sympathetic gaze after the vanishing equip 
 age. 
 
 Bev settled his hat on his head and with 
 the merest tap of the whip urged the 
 horses to their best, and for five minutes 
 sat behind them in a speechless ecstasy of 
 realization. Then he turned and looked 
 at Lyd. She was watching the horses with 
 a delight as keen as his own, her face lit 
 with the fine glow of exhilaration induced 
 by the fresh air and rapid motion. He 
 slackened speed, and for a moment seemed 
 to drink her with his eyes, then, darting a 
 quick look fore and aft, seized the handle 
 of the red parasol and executed an adroit 
 manoeuvre. 
 
 " Ah ! " he exclaimed, with a long exha 
 lation.
 
 In " God s Country." 147 
 
 "Ain t you ashamed o yourself, Bev, 
 right here on the pike ? " demanded Miss 
 Ransome, with a creditable show of disap 
 proval, instinctively repeating the look fore 
 and aft with which Bev had preluded his 
 coup. 
 
 A laugh a deep gurgle of intense satis 
 faction was the only reply to the rebuke. 
 
 " I couldn t help it, Lyd," he said, pres 
 ently, with a weak attempt to appear sub 
 dued; "it s such a lingering eternity till 
 October. Does it seem long to you, Lyd ? 
 Say yes," he urged, with a spasmodic pres 
 sure of the hand that lay in her lap and a 
 futile attempt to circumvent the hat brim. 
 
 " On the contrary, it seems very short," 
 replied Lydia ; " and there is such a lot to 
 do." 
 
 "Why should there be such a lot to do ? 
 I never could see the use of a woman s
 
 148 In "God s Country." 
 
 buying out creation, and making it up into 
 frillfralls before she is married, just as if 
 she never expected to get anything after 
 wards." 
 
 "Perhaps," replied Miss Ransome, 
 loftily, " it s because the men make such a 
 fuss about the bills when they do come in. 
 There s a tradition to the effec that you 
 can t tell anything about what a man s 
 goin to do aftah marriage by the way he 
 has behaved befoah." 
 
 " That s a base libel on the sex, Lyd, an 1 
 you know it," returned Bev, with imper 
 turbable complaisance. " You know," he 
 went on, " there is always a great deal of 
 unnecessary parade about a weddin . Of 
 course the fuss an flowers an the frills are 
 a 1 right for a woman; she looks perfectly 
 natural in the midst of em, an she enjoys 
 it : but it bores a man to death, an he
 
 In " God s Country: 1 149 
 
 looks so egregiously idiotic an out of 
 place. I nevah see a po devil goin 
 through the martyrdom of a big weddin 
 that I don t feel like beatin up a mob an 
 goin to the rescue. An I b lieve all men 
 feel about it just as I do." 
 
 " I s pose they do," returned Lydia. 
 " A man is so use to bein first in every 
 thing, he natchally dislikes a situation in 
 which he is not the mos conspicyus fig- 
 yah." 
 
 "There is only one woman in the world 
 who could inveigle me into goin through 
 with it," remarked Bev, impressively, with 
 another feint at the parasol handle, which 
 was deftly eluded by Lydia.
 
 VII. 
 
 OTHER eyes than those of the Colone. 
 watched Beverly s buggy sweeping along 
 the avenue, but with an expression the 
 reverse of sympathetic. They were the 
 eyes of Karl, who happened at the time to 
 be crossing the lawn. He leaned upon the 
 handle of his rake and looked after it until 
 it turned into the road, and a moment later 
 he saw the Colonel mount his horse and 
 ride away. 
 
 He had known from the first that Lydia 
 was a forbidden joy to him, but the sense 
 of her remoteness never oppressed him as 
 it did now. He had watched her saunter 
 ing toward the gate, and thought he had 
 never seen her look so beautiful. The
 
 In " God s Country." 151 
 
 spectacle stirred him like the swell of a 
 majestic cadence. His heart was full of 
 bitterness, and the emotion hitherto fairly 
 controlled rose and swept over him in a 
 tempest of wrathful, unreasoning jealousy. 
 He hated the arrogant young fellow who, 
 from the height of undisputed possession, 
 looked down upon him in contemptuous 
 security. As he turned back toward the 
 garden he remembered that the house was 
 empty. Lydia and her father would not 
 return until late; the negro women, the 
 only persons who had any business at the 
 house, were at the cabin, most probably 
 asleep. He went to one of the parlor win 
 dows that looked upon the garden, and 
 after one or two attempts succeeded in pry 
 ing open the shutter. He put his head 
 into the room and listened. The house 
 was as silent as a tomb. He climbed in
 
 152 In " God s Country." 
 
 and sat down at the piano. How long it 
 had been since he had touched one ! His 
 fingers, stiffened by manual labor, were at 
 first refractory, and the things he had 
 known came to him only in fragments. A 
 few massive chords from the " Pilgrims 
 Chorus," the ethereal song of the Rhine 
 daughters, a few measures of a nocturne, a 
 fragment of the Sonata Pathetique. He 
 wandered aimlessly from theme to theme, 
 from opera to opera. The things he most 
 loved came back to him gradually, and he 
 played on, taking no note of time. He 
 forgot his uncouth attire, his aristocratic 
 rival ; forgot even the despair that had sent 
 him to the piano for consolation; forgot 
 everything but the heart within him throb 
 bing with tumultuous passion, and the 
 instrument through which it found expres 
 sion. It spoke for him in divine melody,
 
 In " God s Country" 153 
 
 in tempestuous chords, as no feeble ver 
 biage could speak; and as the afternoon 
 wore on he sat there with flushed face and 
 humid eyes, pouring his soul out in the old- 
 fashioned parlor with its lofty ceiling, dim 
 and cool as a cloister. 
 
 The buggy came back along the avenue 
 in the fragrant twilight of the summer eve 
 ning and deposited a portion of its burden 
 at Colonel Ransome s gate. 
 
 " Won t you come in, Bev, and have sup 
 per ? " Lydia asked, as he handed her 
 down. 
 
 " No, thank you, Lyd, not to-night. I 
 brought Claude Graves out from town with 
 me, an I mus go back and keep him com 
 pany." 
 
 He broke a rose from the cluster she 
 wore and stuck it in his button-hole before 
 climbing back to his seat. Lvdia stood
 
 154 / God s Country." 
 
 looking after him a moment as the buggy 
 rolled away. 
 
 " Bev looked perfec ly stunnin this even- 
 in ," she said. The thought in her mind 
 was that he had not been particularly 
 entertaining, and that in spite of the excite 
 ment of the new horse the drive had been 
 tiresome. She was in a mood to resent 
 the air of proprietorship Bev had recently 
 begun to assume. He was entirely too 
 confident; it was almost as if she were 
 married. As she walked slowly toward the 
 house she wished there had never been a 
 mortgage, or at least that Bev had not 
 come between her father and bankruptcy. 
 If anything should happen that she did not 
 marry him the obligation would be awk 
 ward. There was nothing to happen, of 
 course. She had always intended marry 
 ing him ; she would have married him if
 
 In " God s Country." 155 
 
 there had been no mortgage ; but for th3 
 last few days her father s obligation to Bev 
 had haunted, harassed her, and this was 
 the more singular, since up to that time it 
 had not disturbed her any more than if she 
 had been unaware of its existence. She 
 was weighed down by a mental depression 
 wholly unaccounted for. It was the first 
 pull on the tether that until now she had 
 not felt. When she got into the house she 
 thought she heard the piano. She went to 
 the parlor door and looked in. Seated at 
 the instrument was Karl, oblivious of 
 everything but the sounds he conjured 
 from it. The window through which he 
 had entered was still open, and the light of 
 the moon just rising streamed over him. 
 She had always been keenly alive to the 
 refined beauty of his face, but she had 
 never seen it as she saw it now. He was
 
 156 In " God s Country 
 
 playing Chopin s nocturne in G major. 
 She did not know what it was, but the 
 beautiful rippling effect of the successive 
 thirds and sixths with which it opens 
 reminded her one moment of the splash 
 and flow of water, the next, as it sank to 
 the faintest pianissimo, of the leaves gos 
 siping in soft whispers overhead. Then 
 came the exquisite melody of the second 
 movement, with the long note in the bass 
 that was like the dip of an oar. Piano 
 first, then forte, dying away again to an 
 echo, as if a boatman had passed singing 
 in the moonlight, and the leaves murmured, 
 and the stream rippled on. Karl s back 
 was toward the door, and he had not seen 
 her enter. She approached softly and 
 sank into an arm-chair near the piano. 
 He paused only for a moment. This time 
 it was the funeral march from the first
 
 In " God s Country: 157 
 
 sonata. The heavy alternating chords in 
 the bass were like the rhythmic tramp of 
 armed men. The opening measure was a 
 knell, and then the funeral chant, heavy 
 with anguish, rose like the wail of a nation 
 mourning its last hope. The sobbing 
 chords of the minor harmony freighted 
 with the tragedy, the heartbreak of a thou 
 sand defeats, wrung her, weighed her down 
 as with the agony of a personal grief. 
 Then out of the tumult and anguish of the 
 chant the heavenly melody of the trio 
 soared like the prayer of faith. It was^her 
 misfortune at that moment that she pos 
 sessed the rare faculty of instantly recog 
 nizing beauty, whether expressed in form 
 or sound. For an ear naturally acute, the 
 sublime harmonies of Chopin needed no 
 interpreter; to a temperament peculiarly 
 susceptible, that majestic epic of deso-
 
 158 In "God s Country." 
 
 lation was a new language. She had 
 learned music as other girls she knew had 
 learned it, after the manner of boarding- 
 schools, and her knowledge was confined 
 to the flashy and frivolous dances, the sen 
 timental themes with variations on a level 
 with the understanding of those who regard 
 it as an accomplishment and nothing more. 
 She had never dreamed that it was a lan 
 guage capable of conveying the most vivid 
 impressions, of embodying the whole range 
 of emotion from the delicate, ethereal ten 
 derness of a dream of love, to the despair 
 ing wail of a nation borne down by the 
 anguish of ultimate defeat. She could not 
 analyze the impressions she received, she 
 could only feel with the intensity of a finely 
 sensitive organism. She ached as with the 
 pang of unutterable grief. The trio died 
 away and the wail rose again. Her head
 
 In " God s Country: 159 
 
 drooped against the back of the chair, and 
 the tears fell rapidly on the hands folded 
 in her lap. When the last heavy note of 
 agony died away, she felt that she could 
 not have endured another measure. Karl 
 sat for a moment irresolute, then his fingers 
 again sought the keys, running over them 
 in rippling arpeggios, and then he began to 
 sing, to a subdued accompaniment, Rubin 
 stein s air to Heine s lyric, "Thou art so 
 like a flower." He sang in German, and 
 she could not understand it, but she knew 
 he was singing of her, and the last strain 
 of the song was like a benediction. When 
 he had finished he turned slowly round 
 upon the stool and saw the white gar 
 mented figure in the chair, just beyond the 
 oblique square of moonlight that lay upon 
 the floor. 
 
 Was it an apparition conjured by his
 
 160 In " God s Country." 
 
 own intense desire? He sprang toward it 
 with a quick, joyful cry. It was no shad 
 ow. The hand within his own was warm, 
 and its pulse quickened at his touch ; the 
 eyes returned his gaze with a fixed inten 
 sity. As Karl knelt beside her chair, his 
 figure was obscure in the gloom of the 
 room. Lydia saw only his face, as he 
 leaned into the moonlight, approaching 
 her slowly but steadily. She knew it was 
 the gardener who knelt there ; she was 
 acutely sensible of the guilt and humilia 
 tion of the moment, but she could not stir. 
 She was seized with a sudden terror as of 
 a force imminent, unmeasured, as the face 
 drew slowly nearer, the eyes burning with 
 a soul-compelling passion whose prayer 
 was destiny. It seemed strange to her 
 that will as well as strength had failed. 
 It was her wonder and her humiliation that
 
 In " God s Country." 161 
 
 there was not even a desire to escape. It 
 was like a dream in which life seems to 
 hang upon flight, and flight is impossible. 
 The face came nearer. She knew what 
 would happen; she felt the disgrace of it ; 
 she was curiously occupied with the sudden 
 failure of volition, and the equally sudden 
 birth of that mysterious impulse within her 
 which, in spite of her terror at what it 
 involved, yearned toward him with strange, 
 impatient expectancy. At last she felt his 
 breath upon her hair, his lips upon her 
 own. The room reeled, and chaos was 
 come. With an eager, impetuous move 
 ment Karl gathered her in his arms, 
 buried his face in the soft folds of illusion 
 and the cool fragrance of the roses on her 
 breast, and for one delicious moment 
 exulted, revelled like a bee at the heart of 
 
 a flower. It was but an instant. There 
 ii
 
 162 In " God s Country." 
 
 was a step in the hall, and with another 
 hurried pressure of the lips, Karl vanished 
 through the open window, crushing a rose 
 in his hand. 
 
 The step was Mericky s. She was com 
 ing to tell Lydia that her father had 
 returned and supper was ready. Lydia 
 paid no attention to the summons. When 
 the girl had gone, she rose with the semi- 
 consciousness of one hypnotized, and went 
 up-stairs. She locked the door, threw her 
 hat on the bed, and sat down in the rocker 
 by the window. 
 
 " Ich sterbe fur dich," he had said, as his 
 head sank on her breast ; and the impas 
 sioned energy of the utterance was an ade 
 quate translation of the sentiment. 
 
 What was the breezy confidence of Bev s 
 wooing to that heart-wringing supplication ? 
 
 There was no light in the room, but by
 
 In " God s Country" 163 
 
 her chair there lay an oblique square of 
 moonlight like the one that fell at her feet 
 in the parlor. She fancied she could 
 almost see the kneeling figure of Karl lean 
 ing toward her. She closed her eyes and 
 saw again the glowing face approaching 
 her through the dusk ; felt the breath upon 
 her hair, the touch upon her lips ; and at 
 the thought, as at the touch, a wave of 
 exquisite emotion swept over her, a surg 
 ing fire filled her veins. When she opened 
 her eyes the image vanished, the sensation 
 was dissipated. Again and again she 
 retraced each moment of the time from her 
 entrance to the disappearance of Karl ; 
 how he looked when she went in, sitting 
 there with the moonlight streaming over 
 his face, that shone with a new and start 
 ling radiance ; the soft murmur of the 
 nocturne, the fainting diminuendo of the
 
 164 In " God s Country: 1 
 
 gondolied, the sobbing harmony of the 
 dirge, the ethereal strains of the trio, that 
 melodious benediction that was like the 
 " Peace be with you " of an angel ; the 
 kneeling figure, the eyes burning through 
 the dusk, the face coming nearer, the 
 strange quiescence that held her, and then 
 that tumultuous crescendo of emotion that 
 was at once an awakening and a revela 
 tion. Again and again she realized it in 
 all its original vividness and intensity. 
 That mysterious force with which his touch 
 had charged her swept up in successive 
 waves of new, delicious life ; she swam in a 
 sea of delight, across which the sublime 
 strains of the march, the soothing ripple of 
 the nocturne, floated like the echo of an 
 echo as she lived again the delirious 
 ecstasy of supreme surrender. By-and-by 
 the sensation became less and less vivid
 
 In "God s Country: 1 165 
 
 with each return, until it eluded her alto 
 gether, and the fevered mood was suc 
 ceeded by a cold stupor. 
 
 The moon that was just above the tree- 
 tops when she went up-stairs, swept over 
 and dipped to westward. The dense 
 shadow that lay upon the garden retreated 
 before it, and in the windless night each 
 shrub and leaf was sharply etched upon 
 the white wall of the house. The moon 
 went down ; the breeze blew fresh in the 
 starry dusk between night and day; dusk 
 paled to dawn ; the east caught fire, and 
 its glow suffused the room and its listless 
 occupant. A blue spiral of smoke rose 
 from the chimney at the end of the L, and 
 from the same quarter came the regular, 
 ponderous stroke of the rolling-pin with 
 which Cynthy was beating the biscuit for 
 breakfast. Between the strokes the
 
 166 In " God s Country." 
 
 strains of a hymn rose with all the paucity 
 of sentiment and monotony of melody that 
 distinguish the negro song. A procession 
 of negroes passed under the window, sing 
 ing on their way to the field ; then Meriky 
 came to call Lydia. She got up now to 
 change her dress for something more suit 
 able for an appearance at breakfast. The 
 sun was high ; her father, impatient for his 
 morning meal, walked up and down the 
 porch, whistling "The Bonny Blue Flag," 
 and Karl was hoeing in the garden. It 
 seemed to her that the entire solar system 
 had been on a stupendous drunk the night 
 before, reeling through space at a reckless 
 rate. It was strange to see it moving on 
 in the same old way this morning ; strang 
 est of all to see Karl hoeing placidly, as if 
 the shell of a new world had not cracked 
 twelve hours before.
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE day was full of bustle and prepara 
 tion. The friends who for the last two 
 months had visited them in occasional 
 showers were to settle the next week in a 
 
 steady inundation. Some of them were to 
 
 i 
 
 arrive the following day ; and Lydia, while 
 occupied with preparations for their recep 
 tion, was intently engaged on the problem 
 which Karl s recent audacity had presented 
 for solution. What to do with him after 
 that, was the question. She felt that the 
 only safe thing to do was to send him 
 away immediately. But here a difficulty 
 arose : she had so often praised his effi 
 ciency and his willingness to her father 
 
 .that, if she attempted to urge his dismissal, 
 167
 
 1 68 /// "God s Country r 
 
 some very excellent reason must be forth 
 coming, and there was none at hand. The 
 real one was not to be dreamed of for a 
 moment as the one to be advanced ; and 
 though the day was spent in painful stress 
 of thought, night left her where the morn 
 ing had found her wholly at sea. In the 
 midst of her confusion and distress she 
 was secretly pleased that she had failed 
 to find a plausible reason for recommend 
 ing his discharge. She did not see Karl 
 that day. She allowed him to cut the 
 flowers to fill the vases, a thing he had 
 never done before, and she did not go near 
 the garden. 
 
 The summer to which she had looked 
 forward with such keen zest palled upon 
 her suddenly. She wished wearily that 
 there were some means of escape from the 
 duties and responsibilities that had
 
 In " God s Country 169 
 
 hitherto been a pleasure to her. The next 
 moment she looked forward eagerly to the 
 arrival of the guests as to something that 
 was to relieve her from herself, and dis 
 tract her from that harrowing self-examina 
 tion. She could come to no decision in 
 regard to Karl, and she finally turned away 
 from the subject from sheer weariness. 
 The advance party of guests arrived and 
 took possession of the Colonel s premises. 
 The dim upper chambers, so long empty, 
 rang with gay gossip and idle mirth. In a 
 week the house was full, and when these 
 were gone there were others to come. 
 The day was full of rides and drives, of 
 savory feasts and odorous juleps, of excur 
 sions to the river, of visits in the neighbor 
 hood, of croquet and luscious luncheons of 
 water-melon eaten on the grass under the 
 trees; of love-making, of idle gallantry, of
 
 170 In " God s Country: 1 
 
 turf gossip and poker; of juicy jest and 
 spicy story that flowed with the after-din 
 ner wine ; of girls, youthful, sparkling with 
 animation, blooming in the thinnest, most 
 ethereal, and gayest of gay toilets ; and of 
 men, young, middle-aged, or elderly, who 
 were chiefly engaged in making life inter 
 esting to them. At night there was dan 
 cing in the parlor, that looked as if it might 
 have been built for the ball-room of a sum 
 mer resort ; moonlight drives, more water 
 melons, more juleps, and more poker. 
 Dave with his fiddle, and Tom with a 
 banjo that bore but slight resemblance to 
 the dapper instrument that has been 
 adopted by polite society, furnished music 
 for the dance. The banjo was made of 
 the rim of a discarded sifter, fitted with a 
 rude neck guiltless of frets, and usually 
 strung with horse-hair, but Tom succeeded
 
 In " God s Country." 171 
 
 in getting a marvellous amount of sound 
 out of it that was not unmusical. Late into 
 the night the smallest of feet in the most 
 absurdly high heels and the most acutely 
 pointed of toes pattered to the strains of 
 " Captain Jinks " or " Dixie," none the 
 less inspiring as a dance tune because it 
 had borne so many brave men to their 
 death. 
 
 For the round-dances the girls took turns 
 at the piano, and the rollicking measures of 
 the quadrille were superseded by the " Blue 
 Danube," " Lauderbach," and "Cham 
 pagne Charley." This was a trifle labori 
 ous, besides depriving the girl who played 
 of the pleasure of dancing. It occurred to 
 Lydia one evening to ask Karl to play for 
 them. He replied with a disdainful wave 
 of his hand toward the parlor : 
 
 "For you I vill do anyding, for dem I
 
 1 72 In " God s Country." 
 
 vill do netting ; " and the girls continued 
 to take turns. 
 
 The older men and those who did not 
 dance found amusement equally to their 
 taste. The wide hall, open at both ends to 
 the breeze, was filled with tables, about 
 which they gathered ; and here the unfail 
 ing stream of turf talk flowed on, inter 
 rupted only by the clink of crushed ice and 
 the rattle of poker chips. The wind, 
 sweeping over the dewy flower-beds, came 
 in moist and fragrant, mingling the delight 
 ful odors of the garden with the scent of 
 mint. Round every hammock and rustic 
 seat on the lawn floated a pale mist of mus 
 lin, and near it hovered the dark silhouettt^ 
 whose proximity added the touch of senti 
 ment that completed the picture. Out in 
 the starlit dusk of the garden or in the 
 dim shadows of the porch above stood
 
 In " God s Country." 173 
 
 Karl, watching the crowd through the open 
 window, chafing at the spectacle of Lydia 
 floating, unmindful of him and his aching 
 heart, through the mazy revel of the qua 
 drille or the whirling eddies of the waltz. 
 
 In August came the World s Fair, which 
 nobody thought of missing. Not a fair, 
 strictly speaking, but a horse show, at 
 which some of the finest blooded stock in 
 the State was exhibited. The World s 
 Fair, with its incomparable burgoo, the 
 lavish abundance of its dinners eaten un 
 der the trees, where the Kentuckian met 
 everybody he had ever known, and the 
 stranger was told he could feast his eyes on 
 the daintiest specimens of horse-flesh and 
 the loveliest gathering of women he was 
 ever likely to encounter ; where one could 
 sample the native beverage in its purity, 
 and dine off a saddle of mutton that would
 
 174 In " God s Country." 
 
 haunt him ever after as one of the tender- 
 est memories of his life. 
 
 The season waxed and waned. From 
 July until the middle of October for the 
 country was more delightful in autumn 
 than in summer the gay, convivial life 
 flowed on. For the first time since she 
 had entered upon it, Lydia was not ab 
 sorbed by it. Instead of bearing her with 
 it as before, it seemed to float by her like 
 a panorama. She was living two lives the 
 one open, gay, imperious, full of the hom 
 age of an admiring throng, and the small 
 concerns of every-day life ; the other se 
 cret, deep, intense, jealously guarded from 
 th^ " r orld about her and from the too strict 
 scrutiny of her own conscience. Once, 
 when tired and heated by the dance, she 
 had gone to the parlor window that opened 
 on the garden and seen a pallid, wistful
 
 In " God s Country" 175 
 
 face looking at her from the gloom, and 
 always after that she felt it to be there, 
 whether she saw it or not. Drawn by an 
 irresistible fascination, she would leave the 
 dance and scan the shadowy recesses of 
 the garden for the face whose settled sad 
 ness filled her with a strange tumult, an 
 agony of self-reproach. Alone in her 
 room, when the sound of the fiddle and the 
 rattle of chips had ceased, in the moonlit 
 silence of that retreat, full of the odorous 
 breath of the garden, she hugged the se 
 cret that was her supremest joy and bitter 
 est humiliation. Her father s obligation to 
 Bev was the cable of unyielding fibre that 
 held her to her promise ; but had there 
 been no obligation and no promise, Karl 
 w T ; equally remote. She could not sur 
 render herself to a man whom the world, 
 her world, held in contempt. She could
 
 176 In " God s Country." 
 
 not bear the thought of being handed down 
 in the tradition of the neighborhood as 
 that handsome girl of Ransome s who mar 
 ried a Dutch gardener. No one else would 
 ever see in him what she had seen. To 
 all the world he was a Dutch gardener, 
 and nothing more ; and the world would 
 remember him always as her father s ser 
 vant. And she she could never forget 
 that on one occasion but for her interfer 
 ence he would have blacked her father s 
 shoes. But she loved him ; and all the 
 arbitrary distinctions, the petty conven 
 tions, in Christendom could not abate one 
 pang of the fierce, impatient yearning with 
 which her heart went out to him in the 
 deep silen.ce of the night. He suffered 
 without the dismal consolation of knowing 
 that she suffered with him. This was the 
 bitterest pang of all that, out of the over-
 
 In "God s Country." 177 
 
 flowing abundance of her heart, she dare 
 not throw him a drop of comfort. To a 
 woman as finely organized as she, and 
 trained, as she had been, to the strictest 
 code in matters of the heart, her false at 
 titude towards Bev was a constant pain. 
 How Bev would scorn her if he knew the 
 truth ! A cold shudder passed over her at 
 the thought of her father. The agony of 
 the knowledge that she was at heart a 
 traitor to her father, to his honor, to his 
 rigid ideas of class, to everything she had 
 been taught to reverence, was unbearable. 
 She loved her father with a love highly sea 
 soned with admiration and with just that 
 touch of awe that made it ideally filial ; 
 and the possibility of his ever looking upon 
 her with other emotions than those of love 
 and pride pierced her with unutterable 
 
 anguish. She had hoped she would be so 
 12
 
 178 In "God s Country." 
 
 much occupied with her guests that she 
 would have no time to think ; but the cur 
 rent of her thought set so strongly inward 
 that the festivities which absorbed them 
 were but a passing interruption to her. 
 She could not conquer the feeling through 
 which she suffered, but she could drape the 
 ignoble yearning in the dignity of supreme 
 renunciation ; and she did that. She 
 treated Karl with a lofty disdain, whose 
 edge pierced them both at the same 
 instant. During the day she revenged her 
 own sufferings and humiliation upon him 
 without mercy, in the manifold exquisite 
 cruelties that only a woman and a refined 
 nature can devise, and at night wept over 
 him in passionate abandonment of remorse. 
 She remembered with a thrill the splendid 
 audacity of that " Ich sterbe fur dich," the 
 pathos of that " Liebchen." She heard it
 
 In " God s Country." 179 
 
 yet, heard it always ; through the breezy 
 chatter of the crowd, and in the stillness of 
 the night when they slept ; and meanwhile 
 the waning summer was bearing her on 
 into the blazing heart of autumn, towarcl 
 the marriage she knew to be as unfair to 
 Bev as it was distasteful to herself. 
 
 They were gone at last. The great 
 house was empty again. Lydia was be 
 coming accustomed to the dull pain that 
 gnawed her, and there was not so much 
 time to think of it, for the wedding was at 
 hand, and in the rush of preparation every 
 thing else was obscured. The landscape 
 had put on its autumn tints, the seed-pods 
 in the garden were dry, and only a few late 
 flowers lingered. Lydia had been very 
 busy ud day ; she was tired and depressed, 
 and, glad to escape for a moment from the 
 innumerable questions of the servants, who
 
 i8o /// " God s Country." 
 
 never seemed to know what to do with 
 anything, came out on the east porch and 
 sat down in the ample rocker that stood 
 invitingly near. The air was still balmy, 
 and it came to her laden with the odor of 
 fennel and ambrosia. Karl, who had been 
 putting some flowers away in the pit, fin 
 ished his work as the sun went down, and, 
 after putting on his coat, came toward the 
 the house. Lydia thought wearily that he 
 was coming to ask what she wanted done 
 the next day; and she was so tired of 
 being asked what she wanted done. He 
 came close up to the porch, but did not 
 come in. 
 
 " I am going avay in de morning," he 
 said. " May I say good-bye to you ? " 
 
 When he looked at her her face was so 
 blank that he thought she had not heard 
 him.
 
 In "God s Country." 181 
 
 " Where are you goin ?" she asked pres 
 ently. 
 
 " Back to my gountry to Germany." 
 
 Certainly ! why should he not go ? The 
 summer was over ; they did not need a 
 gardener any longer ; she would never 
 need him again. She saw that the depart 
 ure was opportune, but she was stunned; 
 for a moment she felt as if she had been 
 struck on the head. 
 
 "Will you do me de honor to shake 
 hands mit me ? " he asked, with that 
 appealing glance that never failed to melt 
 her, though she might give no sign. 
 
 "When are you goin ?" she asked, as 
 she held out her hand. 
 
 " In de morning before you vill be up. 
 Dat is vy I gome to say good-bye to-night." 
 He held the hand while he answered her, 
 then pressed his lips to it. " I wish you
 
 1 82 In "God s Country." 
 
 may be happy," he said, at last, r :d his 
 voice faltered a little on the last word. 
 Then he put on his hat and went out at the 
 gate. 
 
 After all that she had made him suffer 
 through that miserable summer, he wished 
 she might be happy, and he was gone. 
 She had seen his face for the last time. 
 Somehow, in the multitudinous chances 
 she had considered in relation to him, his 
 going away, the most probable of all, she 
 had not thought of. It seemed now as if 
 it could not be. What would life be like 
 when she did not see him every day ? The 
 sad face, the faltering voice, wrung her 
 heart ; and the agony must find relief. 
 She fled up-stairs to the room that had 
 been the scene of so many bitter co-flicts, 
 locked the door, and, throwing herself face 
 downward on the bed, let the storm sweep
 
 In " God s Country." 183 
 
 over her. She did not go down to supper, 
 but lay on the bed ; and the tempest raged 
 and swelled until it seemed that life itself 
 would be extinguished in the stress. 
 
 It spent itself at last, and through the 
 calm that followed there shone a gleam of 
 triumph. The fight was over and she had 
 won it. She looked back on that long, 
 bitter summer with a sudden sense of awe, 
 realizing for the first time how great the 
 peril had been. She had not known how 
 much she loved him till this moment ; but 
 he was going away in the morning the 
 last fiery ordeal was past. Next week she 
 would be married, and her path hereafter, 
 if not flowery, would at least be smooth. 
 None but herself would ever know of her 
 infidelity to Bev, and she would atone for 
 it by every tender ministration that a 
 secret penitence could suggest. As she
 
 184 In " God s Country." 
 
 lay there she thought of the serenade Karl 
 had sung the first time she saw him. She 
 had so wanted to hear it again, but she 
 could never bring herself to ask him to sing 
 it. She felt as if she could ask him now. 
 Why should she not ? She was stronger 
 now, strong with the assurance of victory, 
 and it could make no difference except to 
 soften the thorny memories of the darkest 
 period of her life. A delicious glow 
 passed over her at the thought of seeing 
 him again. There were only three persons 
 in the house herself, her father, and Karl. 
 Her father slept down-stairs in the front of 
 the house ; Karl was away at the end of 
 the L > no one but her could hear him, and 
 nobody would ever know. Why should 
 she not have this small pleasure to temper 
 the memories of that bitter summer ? And 
 might she not, now that all was over, say
 
 In " God s Country: 185 
 
 something kindly that would mitigate the 
 equally dismal remembrance that Karl 
 must carry away ? With the energy of sud 
 den resolve, she rose. In going to the 
 gardener s room she experienced no sense 
 of impropriety or confusion : she did not 
 know how long she had been lying there, 
 did not have the least idea of the time of 
 night ; but a faint glow from the window 
 at the end of the porch showed her that 
 Karl s lamp was still burning and that he 
 had not gone to bed. 
 
 Her hair had come down and was tum 
 bling about her neck ; she whipped it out 
 and caught it back with a hairpin, took up 
 the guitar, and skirted the shadowy porch 
 to the room over the kitchen. The win 
 dow was open and she could see Karl sit 
 ting in the middle of the room with his 
 head bowed upon his hands. She tapped
 
 186 In "God s Country." 
 
 lightly on the pane. He looked up and 
 saw he r standing in the dim light with the 
 guitar in her hand. 
 
 " Karl," she said, " I want you to sing 
 me that song before you go the one you 
 sung me that day for your dinner." 
 
 He came forward and took the instru 
 ment. He saw she had been crying, but 
 the experience of the summer had been so 
 crushing, he was so subdued by her past 
 behavior, that he did not dream the tears 
 were for him. 
 
 " You are grieved for some ding," he 
 said, with touching sympathy. 
 
 He opened the door and gave her a 
 chair, and, sitting near her on the sill of 
 the window, began to sing the song with all 
 the tenderness and pathos his own yearn 
 ing and bitter disappointment could put 
 into it. It brought back all the old tumult.
 
 In " God s Country." 187 
 
 She saw now, when it was too late, 
 that she had overestimated her strength. 
 When he finished, she was sobbing ; and 
 in an instant he was kneeling by her chair, 
 raising to her a face sad, searching, but 
 shining with the tremulous glow of a hope 
 just born. 
 
 " You weep. Liebchen, is it for me ? " 
 
 She did not answer, but laid a hand 
 gently on his head and looked at him, 
 with all the pent yearning of her full heart, 
 all the agony of that long, weary struggle, 
 and all the pathos of defeat in her eyes. 
 It was no use. At that moment it seemed 
 that there was nothing else in the world 
 but him. Everything else was remote, 
 dim, and unreal. 
 
 He clasped her with a fierce, exultant 
 joy. 
 
 " You love me in spite of dis ? " he
 
 1 88 In "God s Country." 
 
 asked, looking down at his coarse attire. 
 " You love me in spite of dat I am your 
 nigga? " 
 
 " In spite of all," she faltered. 
 
 It was out at last : the crest of victory 
 sank in inglorious surrender. Her humili 
 ation was his triumph. 
 
 He looked at her with a face radiant, 
 shining with a beauty not of earth. 
 
 "Liebchen," he whispered, "it is 
 divine." 
 
 " You vill gome mit me to mein goun- 
 try ? " he asked presently. 
 
 She laid a ringer on his lip. " Don t," 
 she said ; " I can t bear it." 
 
 " I vill not be a vagabond in mein own 
 gountry ; we vill be very happy. Gome 
 mit me, Liebchen." 
 
 He would not be a vagabond in his own 
 country. The information that would
 
 In " God s Country." 189 
 
 have been worth much to her once was 
 worth nothing now. She scarcely heard 
 it. 
 
 "I can t do that," she said. "You 
 must go, and I must stay here and do as I 
 have promised ; but I wanted to tell you 
 that I know I have been very cruel, and 
 that I am very sorry. It was hard for me, 
 too, and I could not trust myself to be 
 kind."
 
 IX. 
 
 IT seemed but a moment she had been 
 sitting there with his arms around her and 
 his head upon her breast, but the east was 
 red and the sun was almost up. Lydia 
 rose wearily. The sense of defeat, that 
 was more fatiguing than the struggle, 
 clung to her. " It s time you were gone," 
 she said. He took her hands in his and 
 asked, with searching earnestness, 
 
 " If you love me, vy vill you not gome 
 mit me ? " 
 
 " I can t," she answered, too tired for 
 explanation. 
 
 " Is it your fader ? " he asked. 
 
 She nodded, and said good-bye, looking 
 
 up at him with a tender glow on her face. 
 190
 
 In " God s Country" 191 
 
 The hair streaming about her shoulders 
 had caught the flame of sunrise like a 
 torch. He stooped and touched it with his 
 lips as reverently as he would have kissed 
 the garment of a saint. As Lydia turned 
 from the door her eye encountered the 
 figure of Beverly Johnson standing in the 
 garden below. 
 
 Beverly had driven to town with the 
 Colonel the day before ; it was eleven 
 o clock at right when they returned, and 
 rather than go on to his own place, which 
 was several miles down the road, he had 
 stayed all night, as he frequently did on 
 such occasions. It happened this morning 
 that there was some urgent reason for his 
 being at home early, and he did not wait 
 for the Colonel s late breakfast, but came 
 down as soon as it was light and ordered 
 his horse. While waiting for the horse to
 
 1 92 In " God s Country." 
 
 be brought round he walked up and down 
 the porch in the cool, bracing air. In one 
 of the garden-beds a belated rose was 
 blooming. It was small and imperfect, 
 but it was the color of those Lydia had 
 worn that day she went to drive with him, 
 and it conjured before him a vivid image 
 of her as she looked that afternoon. He 
 went out to get it, and as he stuck it in his 
 buttonhole he glanced up at Lydia s win 
 dow. There was no sign of anyone stir 
 ring inside, and he knew she was not an 
 early riser. His eyes wandered idly along 
 the upper porch until they reached Karl s 
 room, and there were riveted by the spec 
 tacle of his affianced wife coming out of 
 the gardener s room with dishevelled hair 
 and white, tear-stained face. Their eyes 
 met, and instantly Lydia realized all that 
 the discovery involved Pev s renvmcia-
 
 In " God s Country" 193 
 
 tion of her, her own disgrace, and Karl s 
 death unless he could escape immediately. 
 
 If Bev did not kill him her father would. 
 They would ask no questions : what Bev 
 had seen would be enough. For a moment 
 Beverly stood as one paralyzed, then 
 turned and ran up the steps of the porch 
 with ominous haste. Perhaps he did not 
 know of the back stairway leading to the 
 room, or forgot it in his hurry. He did 
 not attempt to reach them by it, but 
 knocked violently on the Colonel s door. 
 Lydia heard the knock and knew there was 
 no time to lose. 
 
 " Karl," she said, " you must fly for yuh 
 life. Don t stop to take anything with 
 you, an don t try to get clear off. Go 
 down the back stairs an out by the garden. 
 Maybe you can get to the creek before 
 they catch you, an you can hide there so
 
 194 I 1 " God s Country" 
 
 they can t find you. Wait in the place 
 where we used to go for ferns, an as soon 
 as it s safe I ll send yuh things by 
 Schneider." 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, and pushed him 
 toward the stairway, but Karl seemed in 
 no haste to go. 
 
 " Vat vill dey do mit you ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don t know, but it makes no diff r- 
 ence : don t stop to think o that." 
 
 " I dink of notting else," said Karl. " I 
 vill not leave you ; ve vill go togedder." 
 
 " For God s sake, don t waste a min 
 ute ! " she said, in an agony of entreaty. 
 " We can t both get away now. If you 
 escape I may come to you, but if you stay 
 here they will kill you." 
 
 They were coming up the back stairway ; 
 they were almost at the top, and Karl 
 had not moved. " You vill gome to me ? "
 
 In " God s Country." 195 
 
 he asked again, and added doggedly, " I 
 vill not stir mitoud your promise." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I ll come," she answered, 
 dropping limply Into a chair. 
 
 Karl sprang from the room as the two 
 men entered it, and Lydia, pale and 
 motionless, sat unconscious of their pres 
 ence, while they rushed past her with only 
 one thought to lay hold of Karl. There 
 was no way for him to get down-stairs from 
 that side of the house, and they supposed 
 he had run along the porch in the attempt 
 to escape through the main building. 
 While they searched the house, Karl, who 
 had swung himself off the porch by the 
 grape-vine at the end of it, was making 
 his way to the vineyard, screened by the 
 numerous outhouses that dotted the back 
 yard. Through the thick foliage of the 
 vineyard he ran unobserv.d to the creek.
 
 196 In " God s Country." 
 
 Here, for a time at least, he was safe. He 
 knew where there was a cavern in the rock 
 large enough for a man to hide in. He 
 had seen it that day when he swung over 
 the cliff to get the flowers for Lydia. He 
 ran along the edge of the creek until he 
 came opposite the place, waded across, and 
 climbed up by the help of the brush that 
 grew along the side of the rock. The 
 mouth of the cavern was covered with a 
 mat of Virginia creeper, green when he 
 last saw it, now burning red. He pushed 
 aside the vine and crept in. The rock 
 bottom of the cavern was covered with a 
 deposit of leaves and mould that was soft 
 and warm. He stretched himself out upon 
 it and drew the mat of creeper over the 
 opening. He had not slept for twenty-four 
 hours ; he was fatigued with his long run, 
 and wet from his dip in the creek, and he
 
 In " God s Country." 197 
 
 hungered with the keen hunger that 
 comes of exercise and faultless diges 
 tion ; he was an exile, and he was being 
 hunted to the death ; but he was young 
 and he was in love. He heard the bark 
 ing of dogs and the clatter of hoofs, and 
 knew they were looking for him. He 
 could even hear the snapping of twigs 
 as they passed along the bluff close to 
 his hiding-place ; but he saw only Lydia 
 as she stood by him in the dawn, with 
 the tender glow on her face and the 
 flame of sunrise on her hair. He turned 
 on his bed of leaves and slept like a 
 god. 
 
 There was no one in the house that 
 day but Lydia. She knew that her father 
 and Bev were looking for Karl, and 
 that they would not stop till they found 
 him. She knew what they would do
 
 198 In " God s Country." 
 
 when they had found him, and that it 
 was not Karl s fault, but hers. In one 
 thoughtless moment she had brought 
 about this terrible state of affairs, in the 
 disgrace of which Bev and her father 
 shared equally with her, though the 
 danger was Karl s. Why could she not 
 have let him go in peace ? What gall 
 and wormwood it must be to Bev to dis 
 cover such a rival ! She knew he loved 
 her. To have lost her would have been 
 pain enough without this bitter humilia 
 tion. She could not think of her father. 
 The thought uppermost was to get away 
 anywhere so that she might never look 
 into his face again. She could think of 
 nothing more terrible than meeting him. 
 In the old proud, defiant days she had 
 shrunk from the disgrace of being the 
 wife of her father s servant : how infr
 
 In "God s Country." 199 
 
 nitely worse was this ! It was not as bad 
 as they thought, but it was bad enough 
 and they would never know just how it 
 was. They would never know of that 
 long, weary struggle and the victory, 
 which, though dimmed by the confession 
 of her love for Karl, would still have 
 been a victory but for Bev s untimely 
 appearance. Why had she gone out 
 there ? she asked herself in an agony 
 of self-reproach. There had been no 
 thought of shame or fear in her mind 
 when she went. It did not seem wrong 
 to go. It did not seem wrong to be 
 there as long as no one knew it but them 
 selves. Nothing she had done was really 
 wrong : it was simply Bev s construction 
 of the situation that made it terrible. It 
 seemed to her that by the mere discovery 
 the aspect of the whole affair was changed :
 
 200 In "God s Country," 
 
 an act harmless in itself had became 
 heinous by being witnessed. She even 
 thought differently of it herself now. She 
 looked at it with the eyes of those who 
 would judge her, and she could find for 
 it no shadow of excuse. Karl had said 
 he was not a vagabond in his own 
 country, and she felt it to be true ; but 
 her father would not be so easily con 
 vinced ; let Karl be what he might, her 
 trespass was equally unpardonable in 
 their eyes. She seemed to have no feel 
 ing left. Even the love that had been 
 tugging at her heart with such maddening 
 persistence all these months was crushed 
 and voiceless. When she thought of 
 meeting Karl again, it was only as a 
 means of saving him from death, and 
 escaping herself from the possibility of 
 again meeting her father. There was not
 
 In "God s Country." 201 
 
 the faintest thrill of pleasure in the antic 
 ipation. Her duty was to Karl, because 
 it was her fault that he was being hunted 
 to the death. Perhaps she might find in 
 that far country an asylum from Bev s 
 scorn, her father s outraged honor, and 
 her own shame. This was her brightest 
 hope. 
 
 In assisting him to escape she must have 
 help. She knew she could not depend on 
 any of the negroes. The only chance of 
 escape turned upon Schneider, and she was 
 by no means sure of him. At noon, when 
 he came to dinner, she sent for him to 
 come to the house. 
 
 " Schneider," she asked, dubiously, " can 
 I trust you to do something for Karl ?" 
 
 A gleam of animation passed over the 
 habitually stolid face. 
 
 " Yah, yah, you can," he answered.
 
 202 In " God s Country." 
 
 "Where are Laric an Black Fanny ?" 
 " Over in de pasture by de creek." 
 " Well, some time this evenin 1 w*m 
 you to put black Fanny in the stable where 
 I can get her, an to-night, after they have 
 all gone to bed, put a saddle on Laric an 
 lead him up the creek to that high bluff in 
 Major Garland s fiel . You ll fin Karl 
 there. Leave the hawse with him, an tell 
 him I ll meet him an hour befoah day at 
 the top of the cliff where we use to hitch 
 the pha ton. Don let anybody see you 
 goin , an remember his life depen s on 
 your gettin there in time." 
 
 Her plan was to gallop across the coun 
 try to some small station, where there 
 would be little probability of herself or the 
 horses being recognized, and there take the 
 train. It would be necessary to ride a con 
 siderable distance, but the country was as
 
 In " God s Country" 203 
 
 familiar to her as a well-thumbed map, and 
 if they could get an hour s start on Alaric 
 and Black Fanny they were safe. She did 
 not attempt to encumber her flight with any 
 thing in the shape of baggage. She took 
 what money was in her purse, and some 
 jewels she thought might prove useful, and 
 alone in her room awaited the hour of 
 flight. 
 
 The Colonel and Bev came in that night 
 from a fruitless chase. They turned the 
 horses out, but did not go to bed. They 
 had made diligent search wherever they 
 thought it possible for a man to conceal 
 himself in a country so open. They had 
 questioned everybody they met, but no 
 body had seen Karl. They were now con 
 vinced that he was concealed somewhere 
 about the house, and they did not doubt 
 that he would make an attempt to escape
 
 204 In " God s Country." 
 
 that night. With an indifference to fatigue, 
 inspired by a burning desire for ven 
 geance, Beverly watched the front of the 
 house all night, gun in hand, while the 
 Colonel, similarly equipped, guarded the 
 rear. They were so well prepared for 
 Karl that he could not possibly have es 
 caped ; but they were wholly unprepared 
 for what did happen. It was in that dim 
 hour between day and night that Beverly 
 saw a slender, darkly-habited figure steal 
 out of the house and creep stealthily across 
 the lawn in the direction of the stable lot. 
 He could not fire upon it, and he could not 
 molest it, because he was sure it was on its 
 way to Karl, and it was Karl he wanted. 
 His only chance was to follow it, but he 
 had no horse. If he went for the horse, he 
 would miss the direction, which he could 
 only get by keeping an eye on Lydia. If
 
 In " God s Country." 205 
 
 he attempted to call the Colonel, she would 
 know that she was discovered and would 
 mislead him. Several minutes were 
 wasted in an agony of indecision, and then 
 he fired the gun into the air. The shot 
 was answered by a yelping chorus of dogs. 
 It brought the Colonel to the spot instant 
 ly, but it also informed Lydia that she had 
 been seen. She remembered that the 
 horses had been turned into the pasture 
 adjoining the lawn, and that Bev s horse 
 was very hard to catch. She knew that if 
 she could once get started, nothing else 
 could overtake them, and she resolved to 
 risk it. 
 
 As the Colonel came round the corner of 
 the house, she sprang over the rock fence 
 that inclosed the stable lot. They could 
 net see her for the darkness, but they 
 could hear the horse s hoofs thumping the
 
 206 In "God s Country." 
 
 ground as she bounded along the avenue 
 at her utmost speed. 
 
 " It s her," said Bev. " She s gone to 
 him, and now we ll find him." 
 
 There was a sharp clatter of hoofs as 
 she crossed the pike, and they fell again 
 with a muffled beat as she rode into the 
 lane. 
 
 "She s gone down the dirt road," said 
 Bev. " He mus be somewhere about the 
 creek." 
 
 Lydia had counted correctly upon the 
 difficulty of catching the horses. With the 
 greatest haste, it was fifteen minutes before 
 the Colonel was mounted, and then he was 
 compelled to go on without Bev, who was 
 still vainly endeavoring to beguile his wary 
 horse into the bridle. But when she 
 reached the bluff where Karl was waiting 
 "ir her, she found that it was later than
 
 In "God s Country" 207 
 
 she thought when she started. It was 
 already light enough for her to see the 
 forms of Karl and the horse he was hold 
 ing by the bridle rudely blocked against 
 the sky. She did not ride into the field, 
 but beckoned him to come on. It was 
 with infinite relief she saw him mount from 
 the ground with a splendid spring, and 
 take the fence instead of waiting to open 
 the gate. Because he played the piano 
 and did not care to be a soldier, she was 
 accustomed to regarding him as destitute 
 of manly accomplishments, and all day she 
 had been haunted by the fear that he 
 would not be able to manage Alaric, a 
 horse that required a firm hand and a 
 steady seat. He could ride, and she felt 
 encouraged for the race that was to tax 
 both themselves and the horses to the ut 
 most. As he rode up to her and drew rein,
 
 208 /// " God s Country: 
 
 she tapped Black Fanny with the whip and 
 .aid, " Come on, they are aftah us." 
 
 The winding creek hemmed them on all 
 sides but one. The lane led up to Major 
 Garland s house, and had no outlet but 
 the one through which she had entered it. 
 They were compelled to come back to the 
 pike, and much of the advantage of the 
 start was thus lost. Lydia felt that their 
 only hope lay in the delay in catching the 
 horses, and even this was a desperate one. 
 They flew along the mile of lane and 
 dashed into the pike abreast. The horses 
 were splendidly matched in speed, and as 
 they ran like the wind along the level 
 stretch of pike in the tingling air of early 
 morning, Lydia forgot the disgrace of her 
 flight and the desperate chances of the 
 chase ; forgot she was running away with 
 her father s servant, and that, for one of
 
 /// " God s Country." 209 
 
 them at least, death was imminent ; for 
 got everything in the exhilarating impetus 
 of their tremendous pace but the fact that 
 Karl rode at her side like one to the man 
 ner born. They had been on the pike five 
 minutes when Lydia, looking behind, saw 
 a single horseman far behind them dimly 
 sketched upon the paling sky. At first she 
 could not tell which it was ; but as it grew 
 gradually lighter she recognized her father 
 by the color of his horse and his pose in 
 the saddle. Her surprise was equal to her 
 relief, in discovering that it was her father 
 and that he was alone. She could not 
 understand why Bev had not come with 
 him. If he could not get his own horse, 
 she thought he would have taken some 
 thing else. His behavior was inexplicable, 
 but through it they were saved. Her 
 father could not overtake them ; it was not
 
 210 In "God s Country." 
 
 worth while to press the horses; all that 
 was necessary was to keep at a safe dis 
 tance from him until the gray mare gave 
 out, and keep steadily on in the direction 
 they had first taken. By the time they 
 reached the point she had in her mind they 
 would have left him far behind, even if he 
 did not give up the chase when he saw that 
 it was hopeless. She drew rein and ran at 
 an easier gait, measuring her pace with 
 the accuracy of a thorough knowledge of 
 the horses and what they had to accom 
 plish. 
 
 It was with many a deep imprecation 
 that Colonel Ransome recognized the two 
 best horses on his place and divined the 
 plan of the fugitives as he saw them 
 slacken speed. The audacity of it filled 
 him with tempestuous wrath. He saw that 
 pursuit was futile, but he rode on, profane
 
 /// "God s Country. " 211 
 
 ejaculations alternating with the prayer 
 that Bev might come at last. It was some 
 time before Lydia looked back again, and 
 when she did, she saw far behind her 
 father another horseman spurring toward 
 them, and even at that distance and in that 
 dim light she could recognize the magnifi 
 cent stride of Bev s favorite hunter. Her 
 heart sank ; she leaned close to Karl and 
 said, " Let him go ; it s Bev, an he s ridin 
 Selim." 
 
 They could easily beat her father, but 
 they could not beat Bev. She knew they 
 could not possibly reach the station she 
 had in her mind before they would be 
 overtaken. What chance was left ? The 
 stress of thought in the attempt to devise 
 some other plan was as tremendous as 
 their pace. It was getting lighter every 
 moment, and presently she saw a long
 
 212 In "God s Country" 
 
 black line of smoke trailing across the 
 horizon behind them ; it was the train 
 from Lexington and it was coming toward 
 them ; in twenty minutes it would be at 
 Spring Station, where it would make but 
 a moment s stop. If they could reach 
 there at the precise moment, they were 
 safe. Before Bev could reach the station 
 and take any measures to stop them, they 
 would have arrived at the next, where they 
 could leave the train and thus throw them 
 off the scent. The plan shaped itself with 
 the rapidity of desperation. A mile dis 
 tant across some fields there was a pike 
 that led directly to the station. 
 
 * This way," she called to Karl, as she 
 wheeled and dashed over the rock fence 
 uito a stubble field. Karl followed, and 
 on they went over fences, ditches, ravines, 
 all fear extinguished in the excitement of
 
 In " God s Country r 213 
 
 the race. Each time she looked back she 
 could see that Bev, who was now in the 
 lead, was steadily gaining on them ; but 
 every minute brought them nearer to the 
 station. The engine was whistling at 
 Payne s ; a single whistle it would not 
 stop there ; in three minutes it would be at 
 Midway; in five more it would reach 
 the station whose shingle roof they could 
 already see above the trees ; another 
 field, and they would reach the pike. On 
 the other side of the fence they were 
 approaching was a deep depression that 
 made it an ugly leap. They did not see 
 it until it was too late to take the fence at 
 another point. The horses went at it gal 
 lantly ; Alaric made it with something to 
 spare, but Fanny, missing it by a hair s 
 breadth, slipped back into the ditch. 
 
 As Lydia clambered unhurt out of the
 
 214 -to " God s Country," 
 
 ravine, she saw Karl, who had ridden 
 back, in the act of dismounting. 
 
 " Don t stop a minute," she called to 
 him. " I am not hurt, but I can t go on : 
 the mare has broken her leg. Take this 
 you ll need it," she said, offering him her 
 purse and a pistol she had cautiously 
 secured before starting. Karl took only 
 the pistol. 
 
 " Get up mit me," he insisted. 
 
 " He can t make it with both of us," she 
 answered ; and then, remembering his pre 
 vious obstinacy, added hurriedly, " Go on 
 go on ; I ll come if you get away." 
 
 He sprang into the saddle. As they had 
 ridden on she had told him of her plan, 
 and now as he darted away she called after 
 him, "Keep to the pike when you have 
 crossed this fiel , an turn to the right at 
 the forks."
 
 In " God s Country: 1 215 
 
 It was but an instant lost, but Bev had 
 gained that much. For a moment she 
 looked down at Fanny with a heart full 
 of self-reproach. If she had only seen 
 that place sooner. Then her eyes followed 
 Karl, who had taken his last fence and was 
 careering down the pike. He rode like a 
 centaur, and he was certainly getting the 
 utmost speed out of Alanc. Close behind 
 her there was an ominous thunder of hoofs, 
 and as she turned, Bev rose over the 
 shoulder of the hill and spurred past her 
 like the herald of doom. As he leaped the 
 fence, his quick eye took in the horse in the 
 ditch and her figure standing on the brink. 
 
 Lydia now climbed into a tree that 
 stood near the fence, to get a better view 
 of the road. Into the pike and on Bev 
 went, and Lydia, standing on one limb, 
 steadying herself by another, strained her
 
 2i6 In " God s Country." 
 
 eyes upon the horseman who still led t^ 
 chase. He was almost at the fork of the 
 road now he was there. A low cry 
 broke from her. In his haste and con 
 fusion, or because he had not heard what 
 she said, he had taken the wrong road. 
 He could not escape now. Bev was gain 
 ing on him all the time. In a few minutes 
 he would be near enough to pick a button 
 off Karl s coat with the weapon she was 
 sure he had, though she could not see it. 
 
 "I don t s pose," she said, bitterly, "he 
 could hit a flock o barns with a pistol if he 
 was standin still." 
 
 Karl saw his mistake now and turned 
 and fired, but his pursuer rode on un 
 touched. Lyclia saw the sweep of Bev s 
 hand as he reached for the pistol in his 
 hip pocket, a gesture eloquent of death. 
 
 She closed her eyes. There was a sue-
 
 In "God s Country." 217 
 
 cession of sharp reports like the explosion 
 of a bunch of fire-crackers, and then she 
 did not hear even a hoof-beat. She opened 
 her eyes with an effort. Bev was nowhere 
 to be seen. A single horseman rode on 
 into the fiery core of sunrise.
 
 X. 
 
 COLONEL RANSOME had stopped in the 
 last field on the hill, confident that Bev 
 would overtake Karl in a few minutes. 
 He rode on now as fast as he could. When 
 he reached the point where Bev had disap 
 peared, he found him kneeling on the 
 ground by Selim with rage in his heart and 
 imprecations on his lips. 
 
 " How did it happen ? " he asked, for he 
 knew him to be the best shot with a pistol 
 in the country. 
 
 " The cap snapped," replied Bev, " an 
 befoah I could fiah again, he had hit the 
 hawse, an he fell. I shot as long as I 
 had a load, but he was too far off. You 
 
 better get a buggy an take her home. 
 218
 
 In "God s Country" 219 
 
 She s over there in the fiel where Fanny 
 fell. I ll get another hawse an go on. 
 He s got to stop somewhere, an* I owe him 
 double now." 
 
 Beverly, mounted upon a fresh horse, 
 continued the chase, but he saw nothing 
 more of Karl. For a time he followed 
 him by inquiries made along the road, but 
 about noon he lost the trail and shortly 
 .after gave up the search. If he had not 
 gone on in any of the roads which Bev 
 erly had followed, the latter was convinced 
 that he must have doubled and gone back. 
 The best chance now was to lie in wait 
 for him near the Colonel s place, to which 
 Bev believed he would sooner or later re 
 turn. 
 
 The negroes were saying to each other, 
 it " wuz same as if duh wuz a cawpse in de 
 house." From the moment of their return
 
 220 In "God s Country." 
 
 in the morning neither Lydia nor the 
 Colonel had been seen. The Colonel s 
 room on the ground floor was locked and 
 the shutters were closed, and Meriky s 
 knocks at Lydia s door had elicited no 
 response. Breakfast was ready when they 
 came home, but neither went near it ; din 
 ner had been served at noon as usual, but 
 nobody dined ; and now the third meal of 
 the day waited untasted on the table. 
 
 " Sump n pow ful curyus wuz hatchin* 
 when Mahs Wick furgit he meals." 
 
 In that dark room on the ground floor 
 sat Colonel Ransome, bowed by the most 
 crushing humiliation he could have con 
 ceived. To him it was supreme, immitiga 
 ble : the bitterer because it was shared 
 by Bev. There was no room in it for the 
 sympathy and condolence of friends : com 
 plete isolation was the only salve. The
 
 In "God s Country: 
 
 world, life, is worth just so much to any 
 man as he sees in it, and for him the world 
 had suddenly become uninhabitable-; life 
 was emptied of all that made it desirable. 
 He sat astride a chair, with his arms 
 crossed and his head bent upon the back. 
 Hours had passed since his head had 
 been lifted. He could not bear the light 
 of day. The wrath that in the morning 
 had stirred and sustained him had evapo 
 rated, leaving nothing but that abject 
 terror of disgrace that could only be felt in 
 all its intensity by. a man as proud, as im 
 patient of criticism, as haughtily resentful 
 of contumely as he. Other women had 
 fallen into this same pit, and he had not 
 been astonished, had not been moved. It 
 was the way of the world. It would be, so 
 long as men were mortal and women weak 
 He had always regarded woman as the
 
 222 In " God s Country: 
 
 weaker vessel, and, like other men of his 
 mould, men in whom a barbaric vigor of 
 temperament is veiled, not subdued, by the 
 ethics of civilization, he had not held aloof 
 from legitimate prey. He could have 
 looked back upon many an intrigue that 
 was not attributable to the inexperience 
 and the riotous blood of youth. He was 
 wont to reply to the soft impeachments of 
 his friends with the laughing rejoinder that 
 he was no " man of wood," " he wore no 
 halo : " but it did not occur to him that 
 Lydia, who was his daughter, could not be 
 expected to pose successfully as a graven 
 image of womanhood before the temptation 
 to which he invariably yielded without a 
 struggle, and with a fatuous pride in the 
 surrender. Like other men, he reverber 
 ated the adulatory assumption that men are 
 more merciful to women than women are to
 
 In " God s Country." 223 
 
 each other, and he believed it. He had 
 found it possible to bear himself with 
 easy leniency toward the transgressions of 
 women whose disgrace did not come home 
 to him. He found no such excuses for the 
 trespass against himself. The frailty of 
 womankind, that opulence of nature which 
 leads astray, was a thing with which he had 
 many a time been merry over his glass. 
 The follies, the small vanities of women, 
 had been his amusement. The jest had 
 been juiciest that showed them weakest, 
 the story spiciest that attributed to them a 
 vigor of .temperament surpassing his own. 
 But in discussing the sex he had done so 
 always with the egregious assumption of 
 superiority in those of his own household. 
 Was a w",man more or less than human 
 because she had his blood in her veins ? 
 He did nol stop to consider that. Other
 
 224 I* "God s Country." 
 
 women sinned and suffered. That was 
 natural. Men were dishonored every day, 
 and the world laughed unctuously behind 
 their backs. Th-at also was natural. But 
 his daughter ! The thing was unthinkable, 
 and it was true. Had she been the child 
 of another he would have found in some 
 part of a large and generous nature a drop 
 of compassion. It was because she was 
 his own that he had no mercy; because 
 she was so dear to him had been his 
 glory, his pride was the fair flower of a 
 love that was a hallowed remembrance 
 his own heart s blood that he could find 
 no extenuation. She had not only slain 
 his pride, but she had brought into dis 
 honor an unsullied name. And men would 
 think of her, speak of her, as he had 
 thought and spoken of other women simi 
 larly placed. It was part of his punish-
 
 In " God s Country." 225 
 
 ment that the innumerable humiliations 
 that Lydia in her ignorance could not know 
 or dream of were present with him in all 
 the miserable minutiae of disgrace. It was 
 singular that the leniency of which he had 
 boasted was more terrible to him now than 
 the fiercest condemnation. He shrank 
 from it as from torture. 
 
 He did not know of the strenuous fight 
 bravely, silently carried on under his very 
 eyes. Had he known of it he could not 
 have imagined its stress. There was no 
 point in his experience, no stratum of his 
 nature, from which to compute the inten 
 sity, the peril, the sublime endurance of 
 that struggle waged between -two inextin 
 guishable fires, the flame without and the 
 flame within. As little could he measure 
 the force of that imperious impulse, inher 
 ent in woman as in himself but the more 
 15
 
 226 In " God s Country r 
 
 formidable to her because it comes to her 
 first like a surprise in a crisis ; lurks like 
 a brooding tempest: its strength, its pur 
 pose, its very existence unknown to her 
 until the supreme moment in which it 
 sweeps up in full tide from some abysmal 
 depth of her being in a storm through 
 whose tumult the ordinary affairs of life 
 show paltry and unreal. 
 
 Accustomed to seeing the primeval 
 instinct of nature masquerading either as 
 saint or devil, applauded as virtue or con 
 demned as vice, he could not look upon it 
 in its primitive nakedness as an essential 
 impulse of that impersonal creative energy 
 that is neither the one thing nor the other. 
 This view, which, while it could not have 
 drawn the iron from his soul, might have 
 moved him to admiration for the victory so 
 nearly won, compassion for the defeaf that
 
 In " God s Country." 227 
 
 was inevitable, was absent from his creed, 
 beyond the grasp of his philosophy. 
 Equally remote was the comprehensive 
 charity of " Go, and sin no more." That 
 might suffice for God and a better world, 
 but it would not answer here. The keen 
 est agony of all lay in the thought that 
 she must drag her bruised and tarnished 
 womanhood to the bitter end of life, 
 shunned by the women, preyed upon by 
 the men who had delighted in honoring 
 her. Had he been a Catholic, the cloister 
 might have screened her ; but for the Prot 
 estant there was no such refuge. To com 
 mit her to the Roman Church was to 
 commit her to the devil, according to his 
 belief ; and yet in some way she must be 
 saved from that lingering shame in the 
 extremity of which she might be driven to 
 further sin. All day and far into the night
 
 228 In." God s Country." 
 
 he sat with this fanged thought rioting upon 
 him. In this sweat of anguish the amiable 
 complaisance, this debonair tolerance, the 
 superficial gallantry of the man of the 
 world fell away like a gay garment cast in 
 a fight, and the rugged fibre of the real 
 man stood forth in nude supremacy of re 
 solve, in a pagan simplicity of purpose, 
 beside which the frail code that bound him 
 was as gossamer, and the creed that 
 claimed him dwindled infinitesimally. 
 
 At last he rose, felt in the top drawer of 
 the bureau for something he knew was 
 there, and put it in his pocket. He felt 
 his way through the darkness to the stair 
 way, mounted it, and stopped at his daugh 
 ter s door. He walked heavily, and Lydia 
 knew the step. When the expected knock 
 came she got up and opened the door. 
 She had been lying on the bed in her habit
 
 In " God s Country" 229 
 
 just as she returned from the ride. There 
 was no light in the room but that of the 
 full October moon; but that was enough. 
 Her father s face was white and haggard; 
 the story of the last two days was carved 
 upon it ineffaceably. It was of him she 
 had been thinking all day. After Karl s 
 escape she had not thought of him. She 
 had not looked in her father s face as they 
 drove silently home that morning, but she 
 had felt all that he felt. She had never 
 dreamed that anything in life or death, or 
 in that grim reckoning she had been taught 
 to expect after death, could be so full of 
 poignant agony as that drive had been. 
 Through the long day and night she had 
 been thinking of him, and her heart came 
 back to him with a strenuous rebound. She 
 had always loved him with a devotion as 
 rare as it was beautiful. It seemed to her
 
 230 In " God s Country." 
 
 that she had never loved him as she did 
 now, when she knew that he was bowed 
 beneath the weight of a humiliation with 
 which she alone had power to crush him. 
 The sight of his face wrung her as nothing 
 else, jiot even Karl s death, could have 
 wrung her. She moved a chair toward him 
 mechanically, but he did not notice it. 
 He came close to her, but did not look at 
 her, and their faces were spectral in the 
 uncertain light. 
 
 " Lydia," he said, " when a girl has done 
 what you have, there is only one other 
 thing that can be done with decency. 
 Your marriage with Bev can not come off 
 now, and aftah this day s work we can t 
 hope to keep the reason a secret. There 
 is only one thing I can see to do," he went 
 on, in a steady voice : " can you do it, or 
 must I ? "
 
 In "God s Country." 231 
 
 He looked at her fixedly. She was so 
 unmoved, so passive under his question, 
 that he thought she had not understood it ; 
 but before he could repeat it she answered, 
 " I will do it, father," in a voice as steady 
 as his own. 
 
 He was not yet quite sure that she con 
 ceived him fully. He took something out 
 of his pocket, laid it on the dressing-table, 
 and turned toward the door. 
 
 " Father, you ll kiss me first ? " 
 
 The tone was tremulous now and plead 
 ing. 
 
 Her father paused upon the threshold 
 and half turned. He would have done it 
 if he could. Had the lover been worthy of 
 her, he might even have condoned the 
 rest. But she had turned from the man 
 who loved her worthily io debase her eyes 
 U^on a servant. He thought of Bev, the
 
 232 In " God s Country." 
 
 son of his best friend, the man who had 
 generously rescued him from ruin, whose 
 head, like his own, was bowed in shame ; 
 thought of the ignoble lover she had 
 sought to save at the expense of Bev s life, 
 at the expense of his own, if need be ; and 
 he turned away. Even in the awful shad 
 ow of what was to come he could not par 
 don that. He went out and shut the door. 
 
 " How base I mus be in his eyes," 
 thought Lydia, "if he can turn from me 
 like that, when he knows " 
 
 She turned slowly and took up the thing 
 he had laid on the table. It was a small 
 bowie knife in a brass-mounted sheath. 
 She had seen it many a time in her father s 
 bureau drawer, and had heard it jokingly 
 referred to as an "Arkansas toothpick." 
 It was keen-pointed and bright. She felt 
 the edge of it absently, laid it down, and
 
 In "God s Country." 233 
 
 began to undress. There was no impulse, 
 no desire of appeal from the sentence. It 
 was her father s wish, and she accepted it 
 as final. She would have been glad could 
 he have known that she was less criminal 
 than he thought her, but any attempt at 
 extenuation would only make her appear 
 less worthy of absolution in his eyes. It 
 was hard to go unpitied, unforgiven ; but 
 he should see that she did not falter. Per 
 haps in this act of expiation she might win 
 back some small part of the love she had 
 lost, of the pardon she craved. God knew 
 what her father did not know, and perhaps 
 God would be merciful 
 
 The long night passed. A pale glimmer 
 of dawn filtered through the green wooden 
 shutters that darkened the Colonel s room, 
 and he rose with a start, like one suddenly 
 aroused from sleep. " Had she done it ? "
 
 234 In " God s Country." 
 
 He walked totteringly out of the room and 
 mounted the stairs slowly, heavily, as one 
 who encounters an opposing force, and 
 stopped before Lydia s door. The still 
 ness of death brooded inside. He turned 
 the knob and went in. The window was 
 open, and the freshening breeze of morn 
 ing parted the white curtains and came in 
 saturated with the odor of fennel and am 
 brosia. On the snowy bed near the win 
 dow, her head slightly sunken in the soft 
 pillow, lay his child, white and still as a 
 parian bas-relief, the kiss of eternal peace 
 upon her face. 
 
 He drew nearer and looked at her 
 steadily. Beside her lay the knife, a 
 single drop of blood on its point. He 
 turned back the sheet. There was a dark 
 red stain on her left arm, and beneath it 
 some sheets had been folded thickly to ab-
 
 In " God s Country" 235 
 
 sorb the ebbing current of life. He noted 
 this and other signs ^f deliberate prepara 
 tion with pained wonder. Her sustained 
 courage awed him. He would have done 
 it as fearlessly, but he must have done 
 it more quickly. Her readiness to die 
 appealed, as nothing else could, to that 
 recklessness of life that was the foundation 
 of his own courage. She shared with him 
 the contempt of mere breath when all of 
 life but breath had been eliminated. It 
 was the ring of the true metal, and the old 
 pride that lay with its head in the dust 
 leaped up and gloried in the fearless, un 
 questioning atonement. The act knit him 
 to her with strenuous sympathy ; it illu 
 mined for him the life of which he had 
 known little, though its still waters flowed 
 so near him. He choked now. His mas 
 sive chest heaved, and his eyes brimmed
 
 236 In " God s Country." 
 
 over as he looked down at the face, fair 
 and fresh as it had been in the gladdest 
 day of her unsullied girlhood. She was 
 his daughter after all ; to the last drop of 
 blood in her veins she was his own. She 
 had not quailed at the sentence, she had 
 not faltered in the execution : there was no 
 fear in her. He knew she had been proud 
 as he; she had shared his prejudices 
 as she had shared his courage. Thus 
 equipped, he could well believe she had 
 not yielded tamely. She must have 
 suffered. Such pride, such courage could 
 have yielded to nothing less than the impe 
 rious passion that was one of the basic 
 elements of his own nature. In the pres 
 ence of that supreme expiation he could 
 even look admiringly on the impetuous 
 laring of the love that had wrecked her. 
 Karl had said it was divine. To her
 
 In " God s Country" 237 
 
 father in this new light it was splendidly 
 human in its audacity and completeness. 
 He could understand it because it was 
 a part of him. He could now remember 
 with patience that the gardener had a 
 handsome face and gentle ways. He had 
 noticed that himself. And whatever else 
 he may have been, he was a man and 
 young, and Lydia was beautiful. The 
 marble majesty of death was eloquent for 
 her who could not speak for herself. In 
 the silence and dim dusk of that chamber 
 some things that had been hidden were re 
 vealed. It was but a glimmer, but it was 
 enough. He loved her dead as he had 
 never loved her living ; he forgave her all. 
 The kiss of reconciliation denied to the 
 warm, pleading mouth was passionately 
 pressed on the lips that could not answer 
 it.
 
 238 In " God s Country." 
 
 " Brave girl ! brave girl ! " he murmured, 
 chokingly. 
 
 In a vase on the table were some flowers 
 she had placed there a few days before. 
 They seemed a part of her. He raised 
 them to his lips and laid them on her 
 breast. As he turned away from the bed, 
 the face that looked at him out of the mir 
 ror over the dressing-table was old, old ; 
 and the iron-gray locks that yesterday set 
 off his handsome head were white. 
 
 In the crisp, cool air of an October 
 morning two men stood talking at the 
 avenue gate. They were Karl and 
 Schneider, and they spoke in German and 
 spoke softly. Presently Schneider turned 
 back to the house. Karl lingered a 
 moment at the gate. " It was divine," he 
 murmured, "but it is over." The future
 
 In " God s Country" 239 
 
 dwindled miserably before him ; his heart 
 was heavy and his eyes were dim ; but 
 through the ache of withholden bliss there 
 ran a flash of exultation the other could 
 not have her. 
 
 He walked on slowly until he came to 
 the point in the road from which he had 
 caught the first glimpse of the house on 
 that April afternoon. A white rime lay on 
 the fences and the fields that then were 
 green ; the locust trees then full of bloom 
 were bare of leaves, and where he had 
 gathered violets the golden-rod hung out 
 its yellow tassels, and the dusky red berries 
 and brilliant foliage of the sumach burned 
 above them. He turned and looked across 
 " God s Country." The maple grove upon 
 the hill blazed red and yellow against the 
 pale autumn sky ; in the midst of it the 
 Colonel s house, square and massive, rose
 
 240 In " God s Country." 
 
 like an altar wrapped in flame, and above 
 it the soft, dull haze of Indian summer 
 floated like the smoke of sacrifice. 
 
 He heard but did not heed the clatter of 
 hoofs on the pike behind him, till a pistol- 
 shot rang out sharp and clear in the frosty 
 air. Then he turned and saw Beverly 
 Johnson riding toward him, pistol in hand. 
 He took from his pocket the one Lydia 
 had given him, snapped it several times 
 to show that it was unloaded, and threw it 
 from him. He made no attempt to get 
 away, no bid for quarter save the display 
 of his empty weapon. He stood leaning 
 carelessly against the bole of a tree by the 
 roadside, and no muscle or line of his face 
 changed as Beverly rode up to him with 
 his finger on the trigger. The absolute 
 fearlessness of pose and bearing would 
 under other circumstances have appealed
 
 In " God s Country" 241 
 
 strongly to Beverly s admiration. But 
 what would have been a splendid display 
 of courage in a man who was his equal, in 
 a servant was exasperating impertinence. 
 He would have scorned to take such an 
 advantage of a gentleman, but Karl had no 
 rights. Moreover, he had loved success 
 fully the woman of his choice, he had dis 
 honored him, and he had killed his horse. 
 That fierce greed of absolute possession 
 that colors the love of every man, and pro 
 claims his kinship with the Turk, had been 
 crossed. Beverly fired with as little com 
 punction as he would have fired on a thief, 
 and Karl fell back among the dry leaves 
 and grass on the roadside, pierced by two 
 bullets that had struck him scarcely an 
 inch apart. 
 
 Beverly s face, dark and threatening, 
 
 bent over him ; a spasm of pain crossed 
 16
 
 242 In " God s Country" 
 
 that of the dying man ; then he looked up 
 at his slayer and said, with a smile that 
 cheated vengeance of its triumph, 
 
 " I vill see her to-day." 
 
 He closed his eyes, and, with a long 
 respiration that was like a sigh of relief, 
 
 his life went out. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " Killed in Kentucky " was the head 
 line under which the New York Sun a few 
 days later announced the death of Karl 
 and gave some particulars concerning him 
 until then unknown. "He was," the 
 despatch stated, " the son of Prince Fred 
 erick of S , the young Count Alfred, 
 
 who had been in America for a year, dur 
 ing which time his father had been igno 
 rant of his whereabouts. He had run 
 away from the Bonn University, where he 
 was studying, because his father wanted
 
 In " God s Country." 243 
 
 to force him into a marriage that was dis 
 tasteful to him, and had, when discovered, 
 refused to return unless the proposed mar 
 riage were declared off. The Prince 
 finally relented, and his son was on the 
 point of leaving the country when killed. 
 When discovered he was working as a com 
 mon laborer on a farm in Kentucky, and 
 was recognized by a man named Schneider, 
 who had served in the same regiment of 
 hussars in Germany." 
 
 THE END.
 
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