Chapter III: Part 3

"I wrote you a love letter every week!" I exclaimed.

"But people in love write to each other every day," she said. "You don't really love me, Jack!"

"Eloise, I couldn't write every day, but I thought of you the last thing every night before I went to sleep, and I slept with your picture under my pillow, and I used to play that we were married, and that my dressing gown in the chair was you."

"O, Jack," and she clasped my hand in hers, "you dear boy! And I must say I never dreamed you'd be so big and handsome!"

I seized her hands, holding them in mine: "And let me tell you, Eloise, you almost took my breath when I saw you for the first time this morning!"

There was a long silence before Eloise spoke. "Jack, what are we going to do about--about--Aunt Lucretia?"

"Why, I tell you there is nothing to do but to do as she says--marry--you know how she has planned this all her life. It would break her heart; and mine," I added softly.

"Listen now," said Eloise earnestly. "Jack, that is nonsense. I don't love you that way nor you me. I don't care what she says. Love is made from higher, nobler motives, and true marriages should be made in heaven as they say. I," she went on with a sigh, "Jack, I have given up; I was not made for love like that--as you want to love me. I am too selfish, I care too much for the fine world around me, for my own self, for pleasure. I love to will, to conquer, Jack. I don't want to love, to give myself up to any man and his whims unless--"

"Unless what?" I asked eagerly.

"Well, two things," she said. "First; unless I loved him--oh, if I only could! How I would love him! And if not that--well, for--for--it would have to be compensation of another kind, such as great wealth, and all that, to have a great name like that of the Countess of Carfax."

"The Countess of Carfax?" I asked.

She was looking at me very earnestly. I felt her eyes on my face. Something unpleasant began to dawn upon me.

"Jack, I cannot deceive you. I do not, I cannot love anyone that way--that one sweet way. It is not in me. I might have loved you that way, Jack, it is the truth, but Aunt Lucretia has thwarted the chance you had with me, with her blooded stock idea of it. That is why I've treated you so all my life; it was not I, it was Love resenting this profanity of itself."

I could not speak. Eloise, I saw, had much to tell that I did not know.

"Four years is a long time to be away, and after you left I was so lonely, I had no comrade, no Little Brother in my summer vacations. And you were far away, and Colonel Goff--you know how queerly he has always persisted in wanting to marry me some day--not quite as bad as Aunt Lucretia's way, but almost as bad--because, well, I think for no other reason than because I ride well--" she was speaking brokenly. "Aunt Lucretia wants me to marry you because I've got a good pedigree, and Colonel Goff wants me to marry him because I ride well, but I want to marry someone because I love him. You know how grandfather is about Colonel Goff, Jack? Oh, I can't tell it all, but he has made it so unpleasant for me since you left, worrying me about--that I should marry Colonel Goff--that I had nothing, and how great a man Colonel Goff was--and--oh, he has seemed to become childish of late, so irritable and strange, and so he has almost driven me away from home or into marrying Colonel Goff; and you were far away, Jack. And so when Colonel Goff--well, he was as persistent as grandfather, and so kind always and good to me--Jack, you see how I was placed between them--"

"Well?" I said bitterly, "go on."

"And so when Colonel Goff asked me, I--"

The great trees above me seemed to reel, and my heart to stop, and then thump fiercely in my throat.

"Eloise, please don't," I begged. "Do you--you don't love that man!"

"Of course not," she answered coolly, and very quietly, "but--and this is my secret, Jack. Promise me--it isn't known yet, but it will be before long. You know since he came home from the war with grandfather and lived here he has been at outs with his people in England. You know how he had to leave them. Well, it seems that all of his brothers over there have died but one, and that Colonel Goff is next heir, and that he has received a letter from the physician asking him to come and see his brother before he dies, that he wants to arrange about the estates, for they are large, and the brother is the Earl of Carfax."

I had dropped her hand, and my head was bent. I knew what was coming.

"But you don't love him, Eloise, surely--" I arose, the stars whirling above my head, the great trees soughing as in sorrow. She came up in the starlight and put her arms around my neck. She tried to laugh and pull me back to our seat.

"Jack," she said, "I want you to help me--will you not do something--the last something I shall ever ask you for?"

"I love you enough to give you my life," I said.

"You were always so good to me. It is this, Jack--our secret: Colonel Goff and I will be married as soon as he can arrange to go back to England, in a month or two. I don't want any scene with Aunt Lucretia, and so, and so, Jack, we'll just make-believe--let her believe it is all right--that we are carrying out her plans up to the very day."

"I'll say nothing," I answered; "you and Aunt Lucretia can arrange it."

"You'll have to act as if you loved me, Jack."

"I cannot act any other way," I said.

She laughed, her voice floating up triumphantly. "And you will have to send me that diamond ring, you know--"

"Eloise," I said again, after a moment, "this is desecration! You know you don't love that old man!"

"I like him enough to be the Countess of Carfax. If I've got to be sold to anyone, Jack," she said with bitterness, "got to be traded off like a Jersey, why I'd rather be traded off as the Countess of Carfax than any other way!"

I flushed hot.

"But Jack, think of grandfather. It is that or be turned out."

"Eloise," I cried, "you know I wouldn't stand for that!"

"No," she whispered softly, "not if you could help. But Jack, I forgot to tell you, you are already out."

I could only look my astonishment.

"I wanted to write you," she went on, "but I was afraid. I learned it all from Braxton Bragg."

"What did he have to do with it?"

"You know he has had a silly idea that he was going to marry me himself some day, though you know how I have always despised him. Well, Jack, you'll never know what he has done; because you don't know the conditions on The Home Stretch. I, myself, didn't, till Braxton Bragg showed me the papers the very month you left. You know how grandfather has always kept that secret drawer in his safe locked? But you remember how we children learned all about it?"

"I remember Braxton showed it to me," I said. "I never knew how he found it out."

"Nor I, nor how he stole the parchment from it, the one that grandfather kept from all eyes, even Aunt Lucretia's, for she knows nothing of it yet. But he did, and he showed it to me, thinking--well, you'll guess why. Jack, we're outcasts, you and I, we have nothing."

She hesitated a moment, then went on. "It seems that the first John Rutherford, the Old Indian fighter, who was killed at New Orleans, left a secret paper with his will, in which he begged the heir who inherited from him, your great-grandfather, John Rutherford, second, who fought in the Mexican war, you know, to bequeath the estate to that son of his who should be a soldier, and that it should be passed on in that way secretly to each generation. Now John Rutherford the second, had only one son, your grandfather, and his son, Braxton's father, was killed in the war.

"Oh, I see now," I said amazed, "and that was why he wanted me to go to West Point."

"And why Braxton Bragg, who is a coward," she cried indignantly, "did go to West Point, after he stole that parchment and read it. And as proof of it, when grandfather was trying to persuade me to listen to Colonel Goff, he told me he was going to leave The Home Stretch so that it would go to Braxton Bragg after Aunt Lucretia's death."

In an instant I saw it all. I understood things that I had given no serious thought to before.

"Yes, I am out," I agreed.

"Jack, Little Brother, I hope I haven't made you unhappy on your first night at home."

I did not speak; she sighed.

"And so I am going to marry Colonel Goff, Jack, and be the Countess of Carfax, and you'll do as I say--you'll make-believe with me. I'd so hate to have Aunt Lucretia know now."

"I'll go on as if it were I," I said bitterly. "I'd do anything for you, Eloise--and--and I do hope you'll be happy yet."

She shook her head: "Jack, you do not know me--that kind of happiness that I have craved all my life is not for me, and it is so hard that it should be, for I have always had such beautiful dreams of that kind of happiness--I, who could love so if I only might--I who wish it so, to be widowed of it all my life."

"I could make you if you'd only wait--give me a chance to prove mine--to make you love me, Eloise."

"It is too late. O, Jack, you deserve better of me than this; you do not deserve so poor return as this make-believe--a make-belief--only this--a little sisterly kiss," and she held up her face in the starlight to mine.

But I sat silent. My heart--it would not take such a make-believe tribute.

I rose from our seat. "Good night, Eloise, I wish now that I had stayed in Germany," I said as I walked in.

"Jack, come back, don't be angry with me. I've done the best I could."

I saw her turn defiantly, like one who, receiving a hurt, fights back. I left her sitting under the trees.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE CHIMES OF THE WISTERIA*

I was up and out the next morning before Aunt Lucretia or any of the servants. I wanted to get to the dairy in time to see Tammas milk. I longed to see his whitewashed cottage and the clean, stone dairy under the hill, near the spring.

I walked through the lot where the Jersey herd had lain the night before, leaving shimmering shapes of themselves impressed in the hollow mold of blue grass, crushed and shining for lack of dew. Nearby was the brood-mare paddock, sloping downward to the meadow. Beyond, the tree-covered hills.

It was a perfect picture; the sun flushing the green of the hills, the air damp and tainted with the earth-odor of early day. But I had not beaten Tammas nor Marget, his good wife; nobody ever beat them up, not even the cows. He was calling them to the barn in the same way as of old, in the voice that I had heard ever since I could remember. He stood squarely in the barn door, blocky and bowed of legs, his broad Scotch face split wide across with a big, kindly mouth from which came, like the deep tones of a cathedral's bell down the valley: "Coom, lassies--coom, noo!"

Like children called into supper they obeyed; silver grays, fawns, chocolates, red-fawns and pied, crumpled of horns and slim of tail, marching solemnly down. One, a three-year old heifer, with her first calf, answered him like a school girl, whirling half around in awkward romp and elephantine effort to kick up her stiff heels even as she had seen the standard-bred filly do!

How restful and natural Tammas's cottage looked! I could see Marget bestirring herself for greater cleanliness of an already over-clean cottage. She was humming, and I guessed it was one of her old kirk hymns or maybe Bobbie Burns. For it was Marget who could read Bobbie Burns! How rich and grand the lines came in her broad dialect! I was a child when she had begun to read Bobbie Burns to me; and though I knew not what she said I hung upon her numbers, and a queer, fine feeling swept over me. I was nearly grown before I learned the dialect myself, from hearing them talk to each other, and knew the greatness of Bobbie Burns in the original.

Tammas and Marget were good people, as genuine as the rocksalt they gave the herd to lick, hiding it in the deep grasses of the meadow, where the thirsty cows would come upon it in unexpected places. Once when I found a cube of it, gleaming in the grass for the cows, I thought how much their own lives were like that pure cube of comfort, doing their work in kindliness and obscurity. Then the clamoring tongues of the beagles thrilled me as of old, as the game little fellows came down the slope of the hill. They had followed me from the house and struck the trail of an early stray rabbit. Across the hills they went, their little piping tongues echoing slowly as they nosed along.

For many years Tammas and Marget had run my Aunt's dairy in the hollow where the great stream came tumbling down from the hills. I looked at it there in the valley, and I tasted again in anticipation the cottage cheese, the buttermilk, and the Scotch rye bread.

Now I saw Marget bestirring herself and again up the valley I heard the call, "_Coom, lassies, coom, noo!_"

In changing their home, Tammas and Marget had changed little else. Even after twenty-five years of life at The Home Stretch they still spoke to each other in their native tongue, though to others they often spoke English with their broad brogue. Even then, Scotch words would break in on their English with the suddenness and sweep of a tidal wave flowing in from the firth. Though they could speak English purely, and were well read in their way, their earnestness might always be gauged by the number of Scotch words which crept into their talk.

Marget had not yet seen me. I went up the path to the little cottage porch, over which wisteria, in full bloom, hung in purple bunches, and whorls of clustering chimes. As I stood there listening, I seemed to hear their chimes, for the odor of the wisteria is a chime of memory. I heard the melody of other days, faint and yet so clear, memories that were almost legendary, of the little boy, motherless, and who had never seen his father, always a nature-worshiper, and a tree-lover; of his Aunt Lucretia; of his adopted sister, Eloise; of his fighting old grandsire, who had been the right hand to Stonewall Jackson when he swept clean the valley of the Shenandoah; and of these two good Scotch people who had taken him to their hearts even as their own. Here had he dreamed and grown up, loving them and the things they loved, and his dreams had been of writing, of poetry, of music; and not of war, as his grandsire had wished. Young as he was he had seen war with clear eyes. How it took the bravest and the best,--and left the weaklings to reproduce themselves. It reversed all the laws of Nature. If Nature had done the same thing for the flowers, not a larkspur purpling the meadows in blossoming ladders, not a wild lupine in whorls of stars, not a nodding head of clover blossom, not a stone-crop of the early spring, nor the flushes of wild hepatica would have survived to-day.

Dog fennel alone would inherit the earth!

Marget, her keen black eyes lighting up with that joy I knew so well, came to meet me. She seized my hands in both of hers, and shouted to Tammas: "Tammas, whaur are ye, Tammas? Come quick an' see whit I hae to show ye!"

"Weel, weel, I'm comin', wumman," said Tammas, wobbling up in his great awkward way, his broad mouth smiling. He grasped both my hands in his. "It's Jack, oor Jack! Whit wey did ye no' tell me ye were here? Eh, Marget, but jist see whit a man oor Jack is!"

I felt Marget's keen eyes sweep over me. "Ay, Tammas, but is na he a wee bit shilpit like? I dinna like to see him sae pale like."

I laughed. "Oh, Marget, you and Tammas, come, you make me think of the lecture room and the discipline of the German drill-master. I smell those Scotch scones right there upon the table, and the cottage cheese, I haven't had any for four years."

"Oh," laughed Marget, "he's jist like he aye was, oor laddie. His appetite and his heart were aye the biggest pairts o' him. Eh, but I'm that glad tae see ye laddie, if ever I kissed ony that was o' the male gender, it's you I'd be kissing. Come on ben."

They led me in, Marget holding my hand and beaming up into my face. "Wha ever wad hae thocht it, oor wee Jack," she kept saying proudly to Tammas.

"Wheest," said Tammas, vainly trying to say one thing and mean another, "Wheest wumman, it's Mr. Jack noo."

For answer I stopped and looked at him with feigned pain, and Marget clapped her hands and laughed.

"Where is Elsie?" I said, suddenly remembering. "Has she grown any?"

I thought Tammas's smile would spread over the rest of him when I asked for his granddaughter.

"Has she grown any? My, my! Why listen, Jack, 'tis four years since you saw her--she was twelve then--our little lassie, and four years make a deal o' difference in a lassie."

"She has jist gane oot to the dairy to get some cream for breakfast," said Marget. "See, yonder she comes. Look an' tell me if she's the same," and Marget pointed with a smile.

I saw a tall girl coming down the little path, carrying a pitcher of cream in one hand and twirling a Scotch sunbonnet in the other. Her dark red-brown hair fell in two school girl braids down her back. Her every line showed gentleness of breeding; and her beauty of face was really wonderful.

"She's jist pat on ane o' her low necked morning gowns, an' she's that thin that they show ower muckle o' her neck," said Marget apologetically.

"She is lovely," I said; "you should have named her Annie Laurie," and I hummed the old song:

"Her cheek is like the snow drift,
Her neck is like the swan."

"Dae ye really think she is that bonnie?" Tammas smiled, pleased that I should have compared her to Annie Laurie.

"It is not exactly beauty so much, Tammas," I said; "it is something like royalty. She looks like some Greek nymph of the woods that has stepped out of a water lily."

Marget was smiling at my praise.

"Ay, but it's jist as ye say, Jack," said Tammas. "Oor lassie looks that way." He stopped and his voice dropped. "An' her bonnie mother, oor daughter,--it is that like her that Elsie is,--aye, the very twin star o' oor ain bairn, Marget."

"Look," said Marget, "dae you ken I canna mak her wear her shoes yet, when there's nobody aboot, and the pools o' the spring sae inviting. Look ye, if ever there was a child," and she laughed, pulling Tammas and me to the door to see better.

Elsie had stopped, and sat down on the grass above the pool, her pitcher beside her, and was splashing her feet in the water.

"She may be grown, Tammas, but she is the same child I've known always. I remember the funny little thing when she was two years old."

"Three," corrected Marget, "that was when we took her after the passing of oor bonnie lassie."

"And how she loved to follow me around like a kitten."

I had never asked Tammas and Marget for Elsie's history. I knew it had been sad to them.

"I did not tell you about her. I did not tell you, lad, it was all too sad," said Marget, as if guessing my thoughts, "but noo that it is so long ago and you have grown, you and Elsie, I think it only fair that we tell you only a bit of it, so that you may not misjudge her, nor us," and she looked inquiringly at Tammas.

Tammas nodded.

"She was oor only daughter," she said, "we never saw him. He stole oor lassie when she lookit jist as ye see yon ane, and nae aulder, an' because she wasna' o' his station, his graun' folk scorned her and her bairn. Aye, but he was true, tho', standing up for oor lassie till--till. Weel, there was a tragedy, an' he had to flee for his life. He gaed to the war somewhere--we never saw him--an' we dinna ken. Then she died, and syne we cam' here wi' Elsie."

I saw the tears start into her eyes. "E-lsie, E-lsie, here's our Mr. Jack come back," she called.

Instantly there was a flutter of feet withdrawn from the pool. The pitcher was left on the bank, and the hat also. She came running, her blue eyes smiling at me, quite unembarrassed, and even singularly calm.

She came up, put both her hands into mine, and her blue eyes flashed at me.

"Kiss him," laughed Marget, "it's oor ain Mr. Jack."

She instantly obeyed, touching me lightly on one cheek. Then in an earnest little voice she said, "Mr. Jack, I'm so glad you have come home. How I have missed you these four years!"

"If I had dreamed that you had grown to be so beautiful," I said teasingly, "I'd have come home sooner."

She glanced at me quickly and seriously. "Oh, I've forgotten my cream and it's time for breakfast," she said hastily, and ran back down the path.

"I should say so, Marget," I said. "How hungry I am!"

"It's good to be here again," I added, as I sat down to the little table; "and, Tammas, there is Elsie back with the cream. Put on some of that clotted cream in the pot, cream thick, for it is a long lost brother that I've been separated from."

"Ay, but the cottage cheese. Don't forget that is your appetizer," cried Marget authoritatively, as she pushed a great saucer, flaked up to white foaminess, toward me.

For answer I fell to.

"Hold!" cried Tammas, his hand going up and the great fun-loving mouth changing to quick solemnity. Often as a boy I had seen his hand raised most unexpectedly, and never had I failed to obey. My head bent. Then Tammas, his great knotted hand uplifted, prayed in Scotch, as was his wont:

"'Oh, Thou wha kindly dost provide,
For every creature's want!
We bless Thee, God o' Nature wide,
For a' Thy goodness lent:
An' gin it please Thee, heavenly guide,
May never waur be sent;
But whether granted or denied,
Lord, bless us wi' content!'

And to-day thanks be added, greatest of all, that our Jackie is with us again. Amen!"

"Amen," chimed in Marget.

I looked over the table at the Scotch scones, the poached eggs, the funny little cuts of butter, miniature loaves of it pressed and decorated. "I see you've got the same bill of fare, Marget," I said.

"Well," she answered, falling again into English, "we are two old people set in our ways, and it seems to suit us."

"Noo, if you'd only told us you were coming," said Tammas, trying to speak ironically, "I'd 'a had some o' thae auld things ye're sae fond o', Jackie, such as sliced Indian turnips like ye got up in the lodge of the rocks on the hill yon day," and he laughed as he recalled the burning my lips got from the raw turnip.

I laughed. "Tammas, it must not go back to Aunt Lucretia that I ate my first breakfast with you."

"It's a mile to the hoose," said Marget, "an it's only sax o'clock, sae there's a graun' excuse for ye to eat anither breakfast, when ye gang back." She smiled with that funny little smile I had known of old when she wanted one to know that she was meaning the opposite, but was too Scotch to express it.

"Weel, we winna say onything about it," said Tammas. "Jackie, lad, if ye've got onything like ye're auld appetite, ye'll be ready for anither at the hoose when ye get back. Dae ye mind hoo ye used to dae that when ye were jist oor wee laddie, running aboot the dairy an' dipping your fingers on the sly in oor cream pots?"

So I let him launch into his favorite subject, the cows, and the wonderful record they had made since I left. Of Gladys Gaily, who had made her pound of butter from less than five pounds of milk.

"Aye, lad, 'tis the ould Top Sawyer bluid that's doing it," he said proudly. And that I would find it all in the last "Butter Tests of Jersey Cows." Several of my old friends had died and one--"Ou, but it hurts me sadly, my boy, to tell it--Gladys Gaily, herself, has passed with that milk fever. Aye, but it takes only the rich ones."

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE STONE-CROP*

I remember that April day when I first saw the stone-crop in bloom.

Across the valley from the dairy is the blue grass pasture of the cows; and on a hillside studded with dwarf cedars, Nature's first efforts to cover up her nakedness after man's ax has passed, runs a streak of bare, brown limestone, winding across the hills an acre wide. Above it the grass and cedars grew down to the bare rocks, and then they stopped short, for no soil was there. Years before, pioneer men, fighting, unthinking, world-conquering, with the primal instinct of the Aryan _wander-lust_ in their blood, had stripped that spot of earth of its clothing, leaving the naked ground beneath, lifeless and bare. In all the beautiful blue grass pasture this was the one scar: on this green shield of Nature, the one rent. The birds, which love the deep shade of the cedars, stopped at its borders and flew back from the strip of brown desert.

The rabbits, hiding in the tangled thickets above, and whose spring-water ran in the glen below, made a path around it, through the concealing grass and cedar boughs that brushed their furry coats. None would cross this bare spot, hot to their feet in summer and freezing to them in winter, where they would be stared at by every bird, or hunted by the eyes of men.

Even the crows drew their line there, and would not fly over it; for the crow makes no path in the sky above that does not parallel a path of supplies below. Often had I seen the Jersey herd, brown and gray and chocolate, browsing in a phalanx, following the earliest grass which grew closest to the rocks, come to the very border of this scar in the cheek of the earth and then in sudden anger plunge in and seek the cedars on the hill, anywhere to forget this outrage on Nature!

I remember the spring I first saw the stone-crop. The winter had been long and raw. Even the blue grass had had a struggle to keep green, and the cedars' stems had become black under the bite of frost. But blacker yet lay the earth's scar beyond them.

Then one day in the spring I went over the hill to Tammas's home. As I came up from the slope and out from the great lindens, and looked across at the other hill for the ugly scar, I stopped thrilled with a strange and nameless beauty. I have no word for the exultation that swept over me.

But I remembered when Elizabeth Browning was dying--she so unbeautiful in face and so star-like in mind,--she uttered a poem which seemed to me to surpass all that great woman ever wrote. For the characters in it were she, her husband, and her God: and the subject was The Beauty of Immortality.

"How do you feel, dearest?" he asked, holding her in his arms and looking into her dying face.

"Oh, I feel beautiful," she said, as she smiled back into his face and died.

Oh, frail little woman, who never wrote a weak line! O, earth-bound and earth-found one, who never created save of heaven! O, little homely one, whose portrait I did not till then even love to recall, so different it seemed from the soul which could write as it wrote: now it hangs the most beautiful thing on my study wall.

I stood there, looking, steeped in the thrill of it. I thought a pink rainbow had fallen across the hills.

Then the nobility of this pink flower went into me, for there is nobleness even among flowers and trees. The blue grass is the aristocrat, who sits only at the richest tables, with cedars to wait on him, refreshed with the waters of a thousand hills. The bermuda runs hither and yon, sending its stolons after the fat things of earth; and the redtop grows only where it can reach the richest granaries. The stone-crop alone clings to this bare brown rock, shielding its poverty.

Seeing this, I gloried in the chance that faced me, the chance to be another type of pioneer, and to undo the wrongs and ravages of my forbears. For this I had sacrificed the love of my grandsire, the General, who had wanted me to be a soldier, and of my Aunt Lucretia, and even of Eloise, it seemed, that one sweet dream of my life. For in the four years I had been gone from her I had lost my chance to win her. What did her talk of the night before mean but that she meant to wed another?

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE TRANSPLANTED PINE*

Tradition, that greatest of all historians, had it, that the first settlers on the lands of The Home Stretch had been a young pioneer and his bride from Virginia; and that she, leaving her old home for a new one in the wilderness, yielded to the pretty sentiment of her girl's heart, and brought away with her a young pine from under her own roof tree. Nursed and watered through all the long journey, over mountains, wilderness and river, she planted it among the great oaks and poplars of her western home. Tradition told how, when the young husband had built his double log-cabin from the solid trunks of the black walnut and thatched it with the rich red hearts of the cedar shingles, the little bride cherished the pine. The story was full of pathos; she and her baby had died that first year, and both were buried in the same grave under the little pine. It was a great pine now, but lonely. It had been a great pine since I could remember. It had always appealed to me, standing alone amid the other trees. For miles I could see it, towering above all the others. And always a little tremor of loneliness came, as one who passes a deserted schoolhouse door where once children have played. The great trees around it, oaks, elms, poplars, maples, seemed at home. This was _their soil_, these were their friends and kindred. But the pine was not of them. It had been transplanted. Were trees men, the pine would be a Highlander of the clan McGregor. And away from its clan, in a valley where it belonged not, in soil that made for fatness and richness but not for religion and art, it was lonely. For trees are but men who are dumb.

Often, as a boy, staying with Dr. Gottlieb in his cabin, I would awake at night and hear the pine sighing. Once I remember there had been a fierce storm, and as it swept through the forest it maddened the other trees until they roared in their wrath. But the lonely pine tree had called above the roar of the others. One would not look in the Swiss mountains for the cherries of the valley, nor for the cedars of Lebanon in the rich loam of the rivers. This pine was the Scotch McGregor in an English court. It was Bonaparte on Elba. It was Thomas Carlyle in Gaiety street. It was a tree without a country....

Dr. Gottlieb lived among the trees in a double log-cabin, and had lived there since I could remember. My Aunt Lucretia's heart was as big as her farm, and for many years she and Dr. Gottlieb had been friends. He, being a scholar and a botanist, a very babe in a strange land in spite of all his learning, had been easily parted from what little he had brought to America, and had actually come to sickness and want. Then it was that my Aunt Lucretia took him in and gave him this cabin on her farm. Since then he had grown famous, and was known over two continents as one of the greatest living botanists. In fall and winter he was dean of that department in a noted college, but in spring and summer nothing could keep him from his walnut log-cabin by the great pine in the little valley, where his wild flowers grew in the hills behind him and the trees were his friends and comrades.

His story was like that of many who claim America as home. In the discontent of the Bavarians in their struggle for a more liberal government, many republican ideas were advanced. Gottlieb, then a student in Munich, with a number of other young men, attempted to celebrate Washington's birthday in the Bavarian capital with speeches so revolutionary that they brought on a riot. In the fighting his roommate and best friend killed a police officer. Gottlieb's family was influential and stood high in royal favor. But the boy who had done the killing was not so fortunate. To be found out meant certain death for him. So Gottlieb pleaded guilty for his friend's sake, and would have been executed, but for the influence of his family. Even they could not save him from banishment, and so he had lived with us, as great a patriot as I ever knew, loving his country so that the thought of it would bring tears to his eyes, loving his Fatherland, and yet himself a man without a country.

Now I stood looking down on the double log-cabin that was his home. All around it was peace and calmness. Here had I learned under Dr. Gottlieb to love the flowers, and the trees, and his books.

What a picture his home made! A great wooded blue grass hill rose gradually, slope on slope, above it, and on a little plateau sat the solid log-cabin. At the foot of the slope and running like a horseshoe around it, was a bubbling stream, coming from the hills to the north, circling around and running into the valley below. Over this, a rustic foot-bridge led to the house. The meadows lay in front of it all. I stood back and wondered how that young pioneer had known so accurately and artistically where to place this cabin? Had it been placed ten yards either way, to right or left, it would have ruined the center of the background of trees beyond, and fifty feet further in front would have placed it too far down the dead level of the center.

In stately distances around stood maples, beeches and poplars, some towering high above the cabin. Lengthwise to the rustic bridge it stood, a beautiful, solid home of walnut, and the red heart of the cedar, its dark, rich logs chinked with the white cement of the lime hills. Clear across the front ran the big porch, solid floored; both ends flanked with purple stars of clematis, hanging overhead, and drooping low over the entrance its great masses of bloom.

The orchard, of apple, peach, plum, and cherry trees, lay off to the right. The old-fashioned flowers were all to the right and the pine tree towered over them all.

I raised the latch and entered. Dr. Gottlieb stood before me, framed by shelves of dried flowers and herbs, a small man with a large head, kind blue eyes. The broad brow wrinkled into its smile as he saw me. I pointed to the stone-crop running across the hill. "Oh, Dr. Gottlieb," I cried, "what is it that in one night makes the bare spots so beautiful?"

He quit his books and came forward, taking both of my hands in his. "Jack, Jack, my boy, you have come back to us again--and from the Fatherland--the Fatherland! ... Let me hold your hand--it has touched the soil of the Fatherland--let me look into your eyes, they have seen the Rhine!" There were tears in his blue eyes.

"Do you remember how it changes every spring, Dr. Gottlieb?" I asked, pointing to the distant crowned hills, the rainbow of stone-crop beneath, and the level stretches of pasture land.

He smiled as he looked across at the crimson covering of the bare hillside. "Ay; but I've not been idle, Jack, since you left. You remember what I had done before you went away--fifteen hundred species all catalogued in my book." He turned and pointed to the glass shelves around. "Now I have added four hundred more."

We talked long over our pipes. He had saved some rare old German ale in cobwebbed bottles, and these we broke in honor of my return. I had to go over my entire life in Germany, and all the four years' work there. As I dwelt on this, as I told of the old places and scenes, he sat with his head down, and I suspected tears.

I cannot remember when Dr. Gottlieb was not in love with my Aunt Lucretia, though he had never spoken to her on the subject. He spoke only to me, and that always in the same way. So I knew what was coming. I had heard it before, and when I arose to go I could not help but smile as he said, "Ah, Jack, but your Aunt Lucretia! That most beautiful and charming of women! Did you know that each of us has our prototype in a plant or flower; did you know that she resembles the great red wood lily--_lilium Philadelphicum_? Ah, Jack, it has always been my favorite."

*CHAPTER X*

*CONQUERING SATAN*

Eloise and I had always enjoyed riding over The Home Stretch with Aunt Lucretia. Since I could remember she had ridden the same horse, a great raw-boned sorrel pacer, full seventeen hands high, and so powerful that he carried my aunt, large woman though she was, as if she had been a child. "His beauty is in his gait," she used to say; "there is but one saddle gait fit for business, and that is the nodding fox-trot, and Tempest has that perfectly."

It was amusing to watch them in action. With his head down and nodding with every stride, Tempest seemed fairly to butt his way into space, reeling off the miles like a great machine in motion, and Aunt Lucretia, in her great, high-pommeled side saddle, double girthed and double decked, sat him as comfortably as if she were in her rocker.

Her saddle-bags, thrown over the saddle, were in themselves unusual, for they held everything needed in an emergency on the farm. In one pocket were the hatchet and nails, for she never rode by a loose plank but she nailed it on again, and in the other were her medicines, everything needed on the farm from a hypodermic syringe to a package of salts.

The day after I came home I rode over the farm with her. "It's good to ride Little Sister," I said, stroking her crest. "What a beautiful saddle mare she has made."

"Eloise did it," said my Aunt. "Jack, do you know she was always foolish about that mare after you left?"

She squared her big horse up to me. "Jack," she whispered, "I don't believe in the stuff, of course. It is all foolishness and not fit to marry on, but there is a great vein of sentiment in that girl in spite of her make-believe and her indifference. After you left she wouldn't ride anything but that mare and I knew it was because of you, and the clever way you did up those two old braggarts of ours in that race."

"Did she, Aunt Lucretia?"

She looked at me cuttingly and then burst into a laugh. "Jack, what shall I do with you? You are so in love with Eloise that it's positively painful. You must overcome it before you marry her; it's not good policy, not manly nor becoming. The greatest race of men was in the days when a man took his wife by force, conquered her and beat her into submission. He couldn't own her until he proved he was a better man than she. Now, the woman rules in everything. Take your silly weddings; they're a glorification of the bride. To see them one would think the poor devil of a groom was a kind of matrimonial valet, a second fiddler, used chiefly to make a background for the bride to show off on--he is not marrying--oh, no, it is the woman--and it's the same everywhere. The women are writing our novels, our magazines, our poetry, running our conventions, starring in our theatres and churches, and doing everything else worth while except making the money. The men have become unconsciously so enslaved that the few of them who do write novels or poetry write effeminate things because the age is under the influence of woman. There is no man-poetry any longer, that's why I never read it. If we don't get a man-age into the world again," she added vehemently, "we are all going to the devil, going to be wiped out by some heathen man-race of the Nibelungen woods, not yet born!"

I smiled guiltily, for I saw Eloise coming out of the house and my heart fluttered queerly at sight of her. She came forward and I saw Goff's roses pinned on her breast.

"This is like old times, Jack," she said laughing, "but where is my horse?" She looked around, glancing at the little pony-mare we had saddled for her.

"I thought you'd like to ride the pony-mare again," said Jim, who stood holding the reins, "like you useter ride with Mr. Jack," he added.

Eloise tossed her head. "No, no; now, Jim, you may saddle Satan for me. Why, I've been dreaming of this for months, a chance to show the splendid fellow and his paces to Jack. I wouldn't miss it for anything."

Jim stood scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Dat devil horse, he ain't a good horse, this mohnin', ma'am, 'specially for ladies."

"Jim," she said sternly, "look me in the eye! What have you been doing to Satan?"

Jim grinned apologetically. "I had to ride him las' night for some med'cine for my sick chile."

"And I told you never to ride him, that he hated the very smell of a negro."

Jim still grinned.

"But you tried him?" she went on.

"Yes'um, and he flung me!"

Eloise laughed. "Served you right. You know that horse doesn't like you."

"An' when I went into the stall to saddle him, he remembered it."

"Of course he did. I told him never to let you or anyone else ride him--no one but me."

"That horse," said Aunt Lucretia, as we followed Eloise to the barn, "is dangerous. I have been expecting to hear of him killing her. It's all in his pedigree, Jack; he can't help being mean. His sire was a rattle-headed but game and iron horse--fast, but utterly unreliable. You may remember how fast he was, but would go crazy, and ran away in a race, running into another horse and getting a sulky shaft driven through his heart. All of his colts I ever saw are crazy, fast and game--but cruelly mean when roused. Still I'm to blame for this one. I thought Little Sister's brain and sweet temper might overcome it in the sire."

"Little Sister is his dam, then?" I said, patting the neck of the mare I was riding.

"Yes, he was foaled the year after you left for school, and is now three," she answered.

I heard Satan before I saw him. He was walking the length of his halter, now and then neighing, then whinnying to Eloise softly. It was the sound of her voice that had softened him. Above the anger which shook his frame, maddened at the sight of the groom who had offended him, he had heard the soothing voice of Eloise, and responded with a gentle whinny.

She smiled. "Just listen to him! Dangerous--he's an angel! Bring him out, Jim." She winked at Aunt Lucretia and me.

Jim grinned sillily. "'Scuse me, Miss 'Leeze; you's jes' sayin' that to guy me. He loves my leetle boy, an' he feeds him an' keers for 'im," he added, "but it looks like he thinks I put an insultment on him. 'Scuse me, Miss Leeze, but I wouldn't go in there for no money."

It was true. At the sound of Jim's voice, Satan's eyes had kindled, and he threw back his head, trying to break his halter to get to him.

"You try him, Jack," said Eloise; "I'm sure he loves you. I never knew one that didn't."

I opened the door. Never had I looked upon so superb a horse: a great star stood out beneath the tangled foretop of his mane, on a great square, broad forehead, so black it was silken. The rest of him, too, was midnight, except one white satin foot. His tail was a heavy hemp of black, shiny silk; his shoulders sloped in the line of strength. His chest was splendid, his muscles, fore and aft, bunched above the cleanest of bony legs. There was great strength, brain, and self-will in his head.

He was watching me keenly, as a wild beast eyes a new keeper. An animal knows friend or foe instantly. Their instinct is unerring and surpasses man's reason. I saw his eyes light up doubtfully, hesitate, and then gleam when I put my hands out and rubbed his cheek. "You splendid fellow; mean? It's not true. Did Jim put an insultment on you, old boy?" I laughed.

Then he rubbed my shoulder with his clean-cut nose.

Eloise laughed behind me. "I knew he'd love you, Jack."

Satan came out playing. Rearing, he stood on two legs like a great boy, showing off before another. Then he came up, rubbing his nose on my shoulder and reaching for the apple Eloise had for him. Meanwhile Aunt Lucretia sat smiling doubtfully.

I saddled him, and when Eloise sprang up they looked superbly splendid, the horse proud of his rider.

"Well, we'll go," said Aunt Lucretia, starting off.

We turned to go to the left. Satan made two quick leaps, playfully, as if to follow, and then, taking the bit he wheeled to the right despite Eloise's protest. He saw Jim holding the gate open for us. He wheeled and refused to go through it; he laid back his ears and quivered with rage at the sight of the negro.

Aunt Lucretia stopped. I pulled up sharply. Eloise sat white with anger on her uncontrollable mount.

"Oh, don't be angry with him," said Aunt Lucretia. "You will have to go as he says."

Eloise touched him with her whip and he reared, leaping high into the air. I caught my breath when she came down firmly with him. He stood backing his ears at Jim. Again she urged him, again he refused. She brought her whip down sharply.

"Don't, Eloise," I cried, "he's dangerous."

Again he leaped high in the air, tossing his head.

Eloise slid down, white with anger. "Jack, put your saddle on him," she said quietly.

"I think we'd better," I said. "I'll ride him for you for a while. It's Jim. He'll never forget him."

"You have a sharp knife?" asked Eloise, after I had put my saddle on the horse. She took the reins in her hands. "No, no, I'll hold him. Don't put my saddle on your mare. Wait."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Eloise," said Aunt Lucretia, "you shan't get up on that horse again."

But Eloise did not notice her; her lips were set; her face white. I knew the meaning of old.

"Jack," she said quietly, "grasp my skirt at the hem, petticoat and all, and cut it clean down from above my knees. Don't listen to Aunt Lucretia. Please, Jack, it is life and death with the horse and me. I'd rather die than have him conquer me."

I knew from her voice that she meant it.

Grasping her skirts at the hem in an instant I had ripped them through.

"Now behind," she said; "it's my old riding skirt, Jack."

In an instant it, too, was split.

She smiled, a flash of her old humor behind her sternness. "Now, turn, Jack."

When I turned back again she had slipped both her garters over her divided skirts, so that they were held firmly to her ankles. The next instant she was in my saddle, astride.

"You, dear, sweet, old, stubborn Satan," she said softly, "I am sorry I must punish you. Shut the gate, Jim; I am going to make him do his best stunt to pay for this."

At the first blow from her whip he sprang up in anger, but the whip fell fast and with fury. Her lithe body sat him easily, like a part of him, her two heels buried in his flanks. He made leap after leap, but still she sat him, cutting his sides into whelks. He leaped high to dismount her; he wheeled suddenly, but never caught her off her guard. The whip never let up. Frighted, angry, he bolted for the plank fence. The gate was shut, but Eloise gave him the whip at every jump.

"Stop her--he'll kill her!" I cried, as I saw him rise for the leap.

I expected to see him strike the fence midway, and come back on her in a heap. Instead I saw Eloise lift him, with a quick firm hand, straight up towards the sky and I saw the horse land on the other side clean, and clear, without losing a stride. Then they vanished in a whirl of dust up the pike.

"I'll ride after her," I cried to Aunt Lucretia. "He'll kill her yet."

"Don't worry," she smiled, "she's more apt to kill him. But that jump, Jack, that jump--did you see it?"

My Aunt's eyes were ablaze with a kindled fire. I had seen it often when a race was on. She rode up to the fence. "Five feet six, Jack," she said laughing; "why, the record cross-country is five feet six--that's the record held by Colonel Goff's horse--" and she laughed again meaningly.

It was fifteen minutes before we saw Satan coming back! He came in a gentle canter, his great head held high in pride, because Eloise was laughing and joking with him, patting his mane and calling him sweet names. "You darling Satan," she cried, as she leaped down, "I did so hate to punish you!"

They say horses do not weep, but there were tears in the eyes of Satan as he rubbed his head against her breast, and nibbled the apple she held out to him.

Up the road cantered a horseman in haste, riding an English hunter. Eloise looked up and smiled. "I can't go with you to-day, Jack. Here comes Colonel Goff. I wanted you to see that jump. Isn't he great? He's done it a dozen times, and yet Colonel Goff really thinks he owns the champion." She laughed, her eyes shining. "I must run in and change my habit for the scolding I know is coming."

I turned sullenly in my saddle and rode off. I did not wish to see Goff take her away from us.

I did not enjoy the ride over the farm. The sick brood mare, with the young colt, which nickered so distressingly for Aunt Lucretia, alone excited my sympathy. I was heartsick myself. I did not even enjoy seeing Tammas and Marget.