Chapter XX: Act V: Scene II (2)

Some hints of a progressive law in the direction of a color-change from yellow to blue are sometimes afforded to us even by the successive stages of a single flower. For example, one of our common little English forget-me-nots, _Myosotis versicolor_, is pale yellow when it first opens; but as it grows older, it becomes faintly pinkish, and ends by being blue, like the others of its race. Now, this sort of color-change is by no means uncommon; and in almost all known cases it is always in the same direction, from yellow or white, through pink, orange, or red, to purple or blue. For example, one of the wall-flowers, _Cheiranthus chamoeleo_, has at first a whitish flower, then a citron-yellow, and finally emerges into red or violet. The petals of _Stytidium fructicosum_ are pale yellow to begin with, and afterward become light rose-colored. An evening primrose, _Oenothera tetraptera_, has white flowers in its first stage, and red ones at a later period of development. _Cobea scandens_ goes from white to violet; _Hibiscus mutabilis_ from white through flesh-colored to red. The common Virginia stock of our gardens _(Malcolmia)_ often opens of a pale yellowish green, then becomes faintly pink; afterward deepens into bright red; and fades away at the last into mauve or blue. Fritz Müller's _Lantana_ is yellow on its first day, orange on its second, and purple on the third. The whole family of _Boraginaceae_ begin by being pink and end with being blue. The garden convolvulus opens a blushing white and passes into full purple. In all these and many other cases the general direction of the changes is the same. They are usually set down as due to varying degrees of oxidation in the pigmentary matter. If this be so, there is a good reason why bees should be specially fond of blue, and why blue flowers should be specially adapted for fertilization by their aid. For Mr. A.R. Wallace has shown that color is most apt to appear or to vary in those parts of plants or animals which have undergone the highest amount of modification. The markings of the peacock and the argus pheasant come out upon their immensely developed secondary tail-feathers or wing-plumes; the metallic hues of sun-birds, or humming-birds, show themselves upon their highly specialized crests, gorgets, or lappets. It is the same with the hackles of fowls, the head ornaments of fruit-pigeons, and the bills of toucans. The most exquisite colors in the insect world are those which are developed on the greatly expanded and delicately feathered wings of butterflies; and the eye-spots which adorn a few species are usually found on their very highly modified swallow-tail appendages. So too with flowers: those which have undergone most modification have their colors most profoundly altered. In this way, we may put it down as a general rule (to be tested hereafter) that the least developed flowers are usually yellow or white; those which have undergone a little more modification are usually pink or red; and those which have been most highly specialized of any are usually purple, lilac, or blue. Absolute deep ultramarine probably marks the highest level of all.

On the other hand, Mr. Wallace's principle also explains why the bees and butterflies should prefer these specialized colors to all others, and should therefore select those flowers which display them by preference over any less developed types; for bees and butterflies are the most highly adapted of all insects to honey-seeking and flower-feeding. They have themselves on their side undergone the largest amount of specialization for that particular function. And if the more specialized and modified flowers, which gradually fitted their forms and the position of their honey-glands to the forms of the bees or butterflies, showed a natural tendency to pass from yellow through pink and red to purple and blue, it would follow that the insects which were being evolved side by side with them, and which were aiding at the same time in their evolution, would grow to recognize these developed colors as the visible symbols of those flowers from which they could obtain the largest amount of honey with the least possible trouble. Thus it would finally result that the ordinary unspecialized flowers, which depended upon small insect riff-raff, would be mostly left yellow or white; those which appealed to rather higher insects would become pink or red; and those which laid themselves out for bees or butterflies, the aristocrats of the arthropodous world, would grow for the most part to be purple or blue.

Now, this is very much what we actually find to be the case in nature. The simplest and earliest flowers are those with regular, symmetrical open cups, like the _Ranunculus_ genus, the _Potentillas_, and the _Alsine_ or chickweeds, which can be visited by any insects whatsoever; and these are in large part yellow or white. A little higher are flowers like the Campions or _Sileneoe_, and the stocks (_Matthiola_), with more or less closed cups, whose honey can only be reached by more specialized insects; and these are oftener pink or reddish. More profoundly modified are those irregular one-sided flowers, like the violets, peas, and orchids, which have assumed special shapes to accommodate bees and other specific honey-seekers; and these are often purple and not unfrequently blue. Highly specialized in another way are the flowers like harebells (_Campanulaceoe_), scabious (_Dipsaceoe_), and heaths (_Ericaceoe_), whose petals have all coalesced into a tubular corolla; and these might almost be said to be usually purple or blue. And finally, highest of all are the flowers like labiates (rosemary, _Salvia_, etc.) and speedwells (_Veronica_), whose tubular corolla has been turned to one side, thus combining the united petals with the irregular shape; and these are almost invariably purple or blue.

AMONG THE HEATHER

From 'The Evolutionist at Large'

I suppose even that apocryphal person, the general reader, would be insulted at being told at this hour of the day that all bright-colored flowers are fertilized by the visits of insects, whose attentions they are specially designed to solicit. Everybody has heard over and over again that roses, orchids, and columbines have acquired their honey to allure the friendly bee, their gaudy petals to advertise the honey, and their divers shapes to insure the proper fertilization by the correct type of insect. But everybody does not know how specifically certain blossoms have laid themselves out for a particular species of fly, beetle, or tiny moth. Here on the higher downs, for instance, most flowers are exceptionally large and brilliant; while all Alpine climbers must have noticed that the most gorgeous masses of bloom in Switzerland occur just below the snow-line. The reason is, that such blossoms must be fertilized by butterflies alone. Bees, their great rivals in honey-sucking, frequent only the lower meadows and slopes, where flowers are many and small: they seldom venture far from the hive or the nest among the high peaks and chilly nooks where we find those great patches of blue gentian or purple anemone, which hang like monstrous breadths of tapestry upon the mountain sides. This heather here, now fully opening in the warmer sun of the southern counties--it is still but in the bud among the Scotch hills, I doubt not--specially lays itself out for the humble-bee, and its masses form almost his highest pasture-grounds; but the butterflies--insect vagrants that they are--have no fixed home, and they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that he is, from a great patch of color here to another great patch at a distance, whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size and brilliancy. Hence, as that indefatigable observer, Dr. Hermann Müller, has noticed, all Alpine or hill-top flowers have very large and conspicuous blossoms, generally grouped together in big clusters so as to catch a passing glance of the butterfly's eye. As soon as the insect spies such a cluster, the color seems to act as a stimulant to his broad wings, just as the candle-light does to those of his cousin the moth. Off he sails at once, as if by automatic action, towards the distant patch, and there both robs the plant of its honey, and at the same time carries to it on his legs and head fertilizing pollen from the last of its congeners which he favored with a call. For of course both bees and butterflies stick on the whole to a single species at a time; or else the flowers would only get uselessly hybridized, instead of being impregnated with pollen from other plants of their own kind. For this purpose it is that most plants lay themselves out to secure the attention of only two or three varieties among their insect allies, while they make their nectaries either too deep or too shallow for the convenience of all other kinds.

Insects, however, differ much from one another in their aesthetic tastes, and flowers are adapted accordingly to the varying fancies of the different kinds. Here, for example, is a spray of common white galium, which attracts and is fertilized by small flies, who generally frequent white blossoms. But here again, not far off, I find a luxuriant mass of the yellow species, known by the quaint name of "lady's-bedstraw,"--a legacy from the old legend which represents it as having formed Our Lady's bed in the manger at Bethlehem. Now why has this kind of galium yellow flowers, while its near kinsman yonder has them snowy white? The reason is that lady's-bedstraw is fertilized by small beetles; and beetles are known to be one among the most color-loving races of insects. You may often find one of their number, the lovely bronze and golden-mailed rose-chafer, buried deeply in the very centre of a red garden rose, and reeling about when touched as if drunk with pollen and honey. Almost all the flowers which beetles frequent are consequently brightly decked in scarlet or yellow. On the other hand, the whole family of the umbellates, those tall plants with level bunches of tiny blossoms, like the fool's-parsley, have all but universally white petals; and Müller, the most statistical of naturalists, took the trouble to count the number of insects which paid them a visit. He found that only fourteen per cent. were bees, while the remainder consisted mainly of miscellaneous small flies and other arthropodous riff-raff, whereas, in the brilliant class of composites, including the asters, sunflowers, daisies, dandelions, and thistles, nearly seventy-five per cent. of the visitors were steady, industrious bees. Certain dingy blossoms which lay themselves out to attract wasps, are obviously adapted, as Müller quaintly remarks, "to a less aesthetically cultivated circle of visitors." But the most brilliant among all insect-fertilized flowers are those which specially affect the society of butterflies; and they are only surpassed in this respect throughout all nature by the still larger and more magnificent tropical species which owe their fertilization to humming-birds and brush-tongued lories.

Is it not a curious, yet a comprehensible circumstance, that the tastes which thus show themselves in the development, by natural selection, of lovely flowers, should also show themselves in the marked preference for beautiful mates? Poised on yonder sprig of harebell stands a little purple-winged butterfly, one of the most exquisite among our British kinds. That little butterfly owes its own rich and delicately shaded tints to the long selective action of a million generations among its ancestors. So we find throughout that the most beautifully colored birds and insects are always those which have had most to do with the production of bright-colored fruits and flowers. The butterflies and rose-beetles are the most gorgeous among insects; the humming-birds and parrots are the most gorgeous among birds. Nay, more, exactly like effects have been produced in two hemispheres on different tribes by the same causes. The plain brown swifts of the North have developed among tropical West Indian and South American orchids the metallic gorgets and crimson crests of the humming-bird; while a totally unlike group of Asiatic birds have developed among the rich flora of India and the Malay Archipelago the exactly similar plumage of the exquisite sun-birds. Just as bees depend upon flowers, and flowers upon bees, so the color-sense of animals has created the bright petals of blossoms; and the bright petals have reacted upon the tastes of the animals themselves, and through their tastes upon their own appearance.

THE HERON'S HAUNT

From 'Vignettes from Nature'

Most of the fields on the country-side are now laid up for hay, or down in the tall haulming corn; and so I am driven from my accustomed botanizing grounds on the open, and compelled to take refuge in the wild bosky moor-land back of Hole Common. Here, on the edge of the copse, the river widens to a considerable pool, and coming upon it softly through the wood from behind--the boggy, moss-covered ground masking and muffling my foot-fall--I have surprised a great, graceful ash-and-white heron, standing all unconscious on the shallow bottom, in the very act of angling for minnows. The heron is a somewhat rare bird among the more cultivated parts of England; but just hereabouts we get a sight of one not infrequently, for they still breed in a few tall ash-trees at Chilcombe Park, where the lords of the manor in mediaeval times long preserved a regular heronry to provide sport for their hawking. There is no English bird, not even the swan, so perfectly and absolutely graceful as the heron. I am leaning now breathless and noiseless against the gate, taking a good look at him, as he stands half-knee deep on the oozy bottom, with his long neck arched over the water, and his keen purple eye fixed eagerly upon the fish below. Though I am still twenty yards from where he poises lightly on his stilted legs, I can see distinctly his long pendent snow-white breast-feathers, his crest of waving black plumes, falling loosely backward over the ash-gray neck, and even the bright red skin of his bare legs just below the feathered thighs. I dare hardly move nearer to get a closer view of his beautiful plumage; and still I will try. I push very quietly through the gate, but not quite quietly enough for the heron. One moment he raises his curved neck and poises his head a little on one side to listen for the direction of the rustling; then he catches a glimpse of me as I try to draw back silently behind a clump of flags and nettles; and in a moment his long legs give him a good spring from the bottom, his big wings spread with a sudden flap sky-wards, and almost before I can note what is happening he is off and away to leeward, making a bee-line for the high trees that fringe the artificial water in Chilcombe Hollow.

All these wading birds the herons, the cranes, the bitterns, the snipes, and the plovers are almost necessarily, by the very nature of their typical conformation, beautiful and graceful in form. Their tall, slender legs, which they require for wading, their comparatively light and well-poised bodies, their long, curved, quickly-darting necks and sharp beaks, which they need in order to secure their rapid-swimming prey, all these things make the waders, almost in spite of themselves, handsome and shapely birds. Their feet, it is true, are generally rather large and sprawling, with long, wide-spread toes, so as to distribute their weight on the snow-shoe principle, and prevent them from sinking in the deep soft mud on which they tread; but then we seldom see the feet, because the birds, when we catch a close view of them at all, are almost always either on stilts in the water, or flying with their legs tucked behind them, after their pretty rudder-like fashion. I have often wondered whether it is this general beauty of form in the waders which has turned their aesthetic tastes, apparently, into such a sculpturesque line. Certainly, it is very noteworthy that whenever among this particular order of birds we get clear evidence of ornamental devices, such as Mr. Darwin sets down to long-exerted selective preferences in the choice of mates, the ornaments are almost always those of form rather than those of color.

The waders, I sometimes fancy, only care for beauty of shape, not for beauty of tint. As I stood looking at the heron here just now, the same old idea seemed to force itself more clearly than ever upon my mind. The decorative adjuncts--the curving tufted crest on the head, the pendent silvery gorget on the neck, the long ornamental quills of the pinions--all look exactly as if they were deliberately intended to emphasize and heighten the natural gracefulness of the heron's form. May it not be, I ask myself, that these birds, seeing one another's statuesque shape from generation to generation, have that shape hereditarily implanted upon the nervous system of the species, in connection with all their ideas of mating and of love, just as the human form is hereditarily associated with all our deepest emotions, so that Miranda falling in love at first sight with Ferdinand is not a mere poetical fiction, but the true illustration of a psychological fact? And as on each of our minds and brains the picture of the beautiful human figure is, as it were, antecedently engraved, may not the ancestral type be similarly engraved on the minds and brains of the wading birds? If so, would it not be natural to conclude that these birds, having thus a very graceful form as their generic standard of taste, a graceful form with little richness of coloring, would naturally choose as the loveliest among their mates, not those which showed any tendency to more bright-hued plumage (which indeed might be fatal to their safety, by betraying them to their enemies, the falcons and eagles), but those which most fully embodied and carried furthest the ideal specific gracefulness of the wading type? ... Forestine flower-feeders and fruit-eaters, especially in the tropics, are almost always brightly colored. Their chromatic taste seems to get quickened in their daily search for food among the beautiful blossoms and brilliant fruits of southern woodlands. Thus the humming-birds, the sun-birds, and the brush-tongued lories, three very dissimilar groups of birds as far as descent is concerned, all alike feed upon the honey and the insects which they extract from the large tubular bells of tropical flowers; and all alike are noticeable for their intense metallic lustre or pure tones of color. Again, the parrots, the toucans, the birds of paradise, and many other of the more beautiful exotic species, are fruit-eaters, and reflect their inherited taste in their own gaudy plumage. But the waders have no such special reasons for acquiring a love for bright hues. Hence their aesthetic feeling seems rather to have taken a turn toward the further development of their own graceful forms. Even the plainest wading birds have a certain natural elegance of shape which supplies a primitive basis for aesthetic selection to work on.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

(1850-)

The literary work of James Lane Allen was begun with maturer powers and wider culture than most writers exhibit in their first publications. His mastery of English was acquired with difficulty, and his knowledge of Latin he obtained through years of instruction as well as of study. The wholesome open-air atmosphere which pervades his stories, their pastoral character and love of nature, come from the tastes bequeathed to him by three generations of paternal ancestors, easy-going gentlemen farmers of the blue-grass region of Kentucky. On a farm near Lexington, in this beautiful country of stately homes, fine herds, and great flocks, the author was born, and there he spent his childhood and youth.

About 1885 he came to New York to devote himself to literature; for though he had contributed poems, essays, and criticisms to leading periodicals, his first important work was a series of articles descriptive of the "Blue-Grass Region," published in Harper's Magazine. The field was new, the work was fresh, and the author's ability was at once recognized. Inevitably he chose Kentucky for the scene of his stories, knowing and loving, as he did, her characteristics and her history. While preparing his articles on 'The Blue-Grass Region,' he had studied the Trappist Monastery and the Convent of Loretto, as well as the records of the Catholic Church in Kentucky; and his first stories, 'The White Cowl' and 'Sister Dolorosa,' which appeared in the Century Magazine, were the first fruits of this labor. A controversy arose as to the fairness of these portraitures; but however opinions may differ as to his characterization, there can be no question of the truthfulness of the exposition of the mediaeval spirit of those retreats.

This tendency to use a historic background marks most of Mr. Allen's stories. In 'The Choir Invisible,' a tale of the last century, pioneer Kentucky once more exists. The old clergyman of 'Flute and Violin' lived and died in Lexington, and had been long forgotten when his story "touched the vanishing halo of a hard and saintly life." The old negro preacher, with texts embroidered on his coat-tails, was another figure of reality, unnoticed until he became one of the 'Two Gentlemen of Kentucky.' In Lexington lived and died "King Solomon," who had almost faded from memory when his historian found the record of the poor vagabond's heroism during the plague, and made it memorable in a story that touches the heart and fills the eyes. 'A Kentucky Cardinal,' with 'Aftermath,' its second part, is full of history and of historic personages. 'Summer in Arcady: A Tale of Nature,' the latest of Mr. Allen's stories, is no less based on local history and no less full of local color than his other tales, notwithstanding its general unlikeness.

This book sounds a deeper note than the earlier tales, although the truth which Mr. Allen sees is not mere fidelity to local types, but the essential truth of human nature. His realism has always a poetic aspect. Quiet, reserved, out of the common, his books deal with moods rather than with actions; their problems are spiritual rather than physical; their thought tends toward the higher and more difficult way of life.

A COURTSHIP From 'Summer in Arcady'

The sunlight grew pale the following morning; a shadow crept rapidly over the blue; bolts darted about the skies like maddened redbirds; the thunder, ploughing its way down the dome as along zigzag cracks in the stony street, filled the caverns of the horizon with reverberations that shook the earth; and the rain was whirled across the landscape in long, white, wavering sheets. Then all day quiet and silence throughout Nature except for the drops, tapping high and low the twinkling leaves; except for the new melody of woodland and meadow brooks, late silvery and with a voice only for their pebbles and moss and mint, but now yellow and brawling and leaping-back into the grassy channels that were their old-time beds; except for the indoor music of dripping eaves and rushing gutters and overflowing rain-barrels. And when at last in the gold of the cool west the sun broke from the edge of the gray, over what a green, soaked, fragrant world he reared the arch of Nature's peace!

Not a little blade of corn in the fields but holds in an emerald vase its treasures of white gems. The hemp-stalks bend so low under the weight of their plumes, that were a vesper sparrow to alight on one for his evening hymn, it would go with him to the ground. The leaning barley and rye and wheat flash in the last rays their jeweled beards. Under the old apple-trees, golden-brown mushrooms are already pushing upward through the leaf-loam, rank with many an autumn's dropping. About the yards the peonies fall with faces earthward. In the stable-lots the larded porkers, with bristles as clean as frost, and flesh of pinky whiteness, are hunting with nervous nostrils for the lush purslain. The fowls are driving their bills up and down their wet breasts. And the farmers who have been shelling corn for the mill come out of their barns, with their coats over their shoulders, on the way to supper, look about for the plough-horses, and glance at the western sky, from which the last drops are falling.

But soon only a more passionate heat shoots from the sun into the planet. The plumes of the hemp are so dry again, that by the pollen shaken from their tops you can trace the young rabbits making their way out to the dusty paths. The shadows of white clouds sail over purple stretches of blue-grass, hiding the sun from the steady eye of the turkey, whose brood is spread out before her like a fan on the earth. At early morning the neighing of the stallions is heard around the horizon; at noon the bull makes the deep, hot pastures echo with his majestic summons; out in the blazing meadows the butterflies strike the afternoon air with more impatient wings; under the moon all night the play of ducks and drakes goes on along the margins of the ponds. Young people are running away and marrying; middle-aged farmers surprise their wives by looking in on them at their butter-making in the sweet dairies; and Nature is lashing everything--grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human creatures--more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod, but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities for joy and pain, as of no more account than a couple of fertilizing nasturtiums.

The storm kept Daphne at home. On the next day the earth was yellow with sunlight, but there were puddles along the path, and a branch rushing swollen across the green valley in the fields. On the third, her mother took the children to town to be fitted with hats and shoes, and Daphne also, to be freshened up with various moderate adornments, in view of a protracted meeting soon to begin. On the fourth, some ladies dropped in to spend the day, bearing in mind the episode at the dinner, and having grown curious to watch events accordingly. On the fifth, her father carried out the idea of cutting down some cedar-trees in the front yard for fence posts; and whenever he was working about the house, he kept her near to wait on him in unnecessary ways. On the sixth, he rode away with two hands and an empty wagon-bed for some work on the farm; her mother drove off to another dinner--dinners never cease in Kentucky, and the wife of an elder is not free to decline invitations; and at last she was left alone in the front porch, her face turned with burning eagerness toward the fields. In a little while she had slipped away.

All these days Hilary had been eager to see her. He was carrying a good many girls in his mind that summer; none in his heart; but his plans concerning these latter were for the time forgotten. He hung about that part of his farm from which he could have descried her in the distance. Each forenoon and afternoon, at the usual hour of her going to her uncle's, he rode over and watched for her. Other people passed to and fro,--children and servants,--but not Daphne; and repeated disappointments fanned his desire to see her.

When she came into sight at last, he was soon walking beside her, leading his horse by the reins.

"I have been waiting to see you, Daphne," he said, with a smile, but general air of seriousness. "I have been waiting a long time for a chance to talk to you."

"And I have wanted to see you," said Daphne, her face turned away and her voice hardly to be heard. "I have been waiting for a chance to talk to you."

The change in her was so great, so unexpected, it contained an appeal to him so touching, that he glanced quickly at her. Then he stopped short and looked searchingly around the meadow.

The thorn-tree is often the only one that can survive on these pasture lands. Its spikes, even when it is no higher than the grass, keep off the mouths of grazing stock. As it grows higher, birds see it standing solitary in the distance and fly to it, as a resting-place in passing. Some autumn day a seed of the wild grape is thus dropped near its root; and in time the thorn-tree and the grape-vine come to thrive together.

As Hilary now looked for some shade to which they could retreat from the blinding, burning sunlight, he saw one of these standing off at a distance of a few hundred yards. He slipped the bridle-reins through the head-stall, and giving his mare a soft slap on the shoulder, turned her loose to graze.

"Come over here and sit down out of the sun," he said, starting off in his authoritative way. "I want to talk to you."

Daphne followed in his wake, through the deep grass.

When they reached the tree, they sat down under the rayless boughs. Some sheep lying there ran round to the other side and stood watching them, with a frightened look in their clear, peaceful eyes.

"What's the matter?" he said, fanning his face, and tugging with his forefinger to loosen his shirt collar from his moist neck. He had the manner of a powerful comrade who means to succor a weaker one.

"Nothing," said Daphne, like a true woman.

"Yes, but there is," he insisted. "I got you into trouble. I didn't think of that when I asked you to dance."

"You had nothing to do with it," retorted Daphne, with a flash. "I danced for spite."

He threw back his head with a peal of laughter. All at once this was broken off. He sat up, with his eyes fixed on the lower edge of the meadow.

"Here comes your father," he said gravely.

Daphne turned. Her father was riding slowly through the bars. A wagon-bed loaded with rails crept slowly after him.

In an instant the things that had cost her so much toil and so many tears to arrange,--her explanations, her justifications, and her parting,--all the reserve and the coldness that she had laid up in her heart, as one fills high a little ice-house with fear of far-off summer heat,--all were quite gone, melted away. And everything that he had planned to tell her was forgotten also at the sight of that stern figure on horseback bearing unconsciously down upon them.

"If I had only kept my mouth shut about his old fences," he said to himself. "Confound my bull!" and he looked anxiously at Daphne, who sat with her eyes riveted on her father. The next moment she had turned, and they were laughing in each other's faces.

"What shall I do?" she cried, leaning over and burying her face in her hands, and lifting it again, scarlet with excitement.

"Don't do anything," he said calmly.

"But Hilary, if he sees us, we are lost."

"If he sees us, we are found."

"But he mustn't see me here!" she cried, with something like real terror. "I believe I'll lie down in the grass. Maybe he'll think I am a friend of yours."

"My friends all sit up in the grass," said Hilary.

But Daphne had already hidden.

Many a time, when a little girl, she had amused herself by screaming like a hawk at the young guineas, and seeing them cuddle invisible under small tufts and weeds. Out in the stable lot, where the grass was grazed so close that the geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes get one of the negro men to scare the little pigs, for the delight of seeing them squat as though hidden, when they were no more hidden than if they had spread themselves out upon so many dinner dishes. All of us reveal traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion. Daphne was doing her best to hide now.

When Hilary realized it he moved in front of her, screening her as well as possible.

"Hadn't you better lie down, too?" she asked.

"No," he replied quickly.

"But if he sees you, he might take a notion to ride over this way!"

"Then he'll have to ride."

"But, Hilary, suppose he were to find me lying down here behind you, hiding?"

"Then he'll have to find you."

"You get me into trouble, and then you won't help me out!" exclaimed Daphne with considerable heat.

"It might not make matters any better for me to hide," he answered quietly. "But if he comes over here and tries to get us into trouble, I'll see then what I can do."

Daphne lay silent for a moment, thinking. Then she nestled more closely down, and said with gay, unconscious archness: "I'm not hiding because I'm afraid of him. I'm doing it just because I want to."

She did not know that the fresh happiness flushing her at that moment came from the fact of having Hilary between herself and her father as a protector; that she was drinking in the delight a woman feels in getting playfully behind the man she loves in the face of danger: but her action bound her to him and brought her more under his influence.

His words showed that he also felt his position,--the position of the male who stalks forth from the herd and stands the silent challenger. He was young, and vain of his manhood in the usual innocent way that led him to carry the chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off; and he placed himself before Daphne with the understanding that if they were discovered, there would be trouble. Her father was a violent man, and the circumstances were not such that any Kentucky father would overlook them. But with his inward seriousness, his face wore its usual look of reckless unconcern.

"Is he coming this way?" asked Daphne, after an interval of impatient waiting.

"Straight ahead. Are you hid?"

"I can't see whether I'm hid or not. Where is he now?"

"Right on us."

"Does he see you?"

"Yes."

"Do you think he sees me?"

"I'm sure of it."

"Then I might as well get up," said Daphne, with the courage of despair, and up she got. Her father was riding along the path in front of them, but not looking. She was down again like a partridge.

"How could you fool me, Hilary? Suppose he _had_ been looking!"

"I wonder what he thinks I'm doing, sitting over here in the grass like a stump," said Hilary. "If he takes me for one, he must think I've got an awful lot of roots."

"Tell me when it's time to get up."

"I will."

He turned softly toward her. She was lying on her side, with her burning cheek in one hand. The other hand rested high on the curve of her hip. Her braids had fallen forward, and lay in a heavy loop about her lovely shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her scarlet lips parted in a smile. The edges of her snow-white petticoats showed beneath her blue dress, and beyond these one of her feet and ankles. Nothing more fragrant with innocence ever lay on the grass.

"Is it time to get up now?"

"Not yet," and he sat bending over her.

"Now?"

"Not yet," he repeated more softly.

"Now, then?"

"Not for a long time."

His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at him. His laughing eyes were glowing down upon her under his heavy mat of hair. She sat up and looked toward the wagon crawling away in the distance; her father was no longer in sight.

One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back view, stamped her forefoot impatiently, and ran round in front, and out into the sun. Her lambs followed, and the three, ranging themselves abreast, stared at Daphne, with a look of helpless inquiry.

"Sh-pp-pp!" she cried, throwing up her hands at them, irritated. "Go away!"

They turned and ran; the others followed; and the whole number, falling into line, took a path meekly homeward. They left a greater sense of privacy under the tree. Several yards off was a small stock-pond. Around the edge of this the water stood hot and green in the tracks of the cattle and the sheep, and about these pools the yellow butterflies were thick, alighting daintily on the promontories of the mud, or rising two by two through the dazzling atmosphere in columns of enamored flight.

Daphne leaned over to the blue grass where it swayed unbroken in the breeze, and drew out of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on their tops the purplish seed-vessels. With them she began to braid a ring about one of her fingers in the old simple fashion of the country.

As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, watching her fingers, the soft slow movements of which little by little wove a spell over his eyes. And once again the power of her beauty began to draw him beyond control. He felt a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in his. His eyes passed upward along her tapering wrists, the skin of which was like mother-of-pearl; upward along the arm to the shoulder--to her neck--to her deeply crimsoned cheeks--to the purity of her brow--to the purity of her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid them like conscious fringes.

An awkward silence began to fall between them. Daphne felt that the time had come for her to speak. But, powerless to begin, she feigned to busy herself all the more devotedly with braiding the deep-green circlet. Suddenly he drew himself through the grass to her side.

"Let _me_!"

"No!" she cried, lifting her arm above his reach and looking at him with a gay threat. "You don't know how."

"I do know how," he said, with his white teeth on his red underlip, and his eyes sparkling; and reaching upward, he laid his hand in the hollow of her elbow and pulled her arm down.

"No! No!" she cried again, putting her hands behind her back. "You will spoil it!"

"I will not spoil it," he said, moving so close to her that his breath was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.

"No! No! No!" she cried, bending away from him. "I don't want any ring!" and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass. Then she got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.

He sat cross-legged on the grass before her. He had put on his hat, and the brim hid his eyes.

"And you are not going to stay and talk to me?" he said in a tone of reproachfulness, without looking up.

She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.

"I thought you were better than the others," he continued, with the bitter wisdom of twenty years. "But you women are all alike. When a man gets into trouble, you desert him. You hurry him on to the devil. I have been turned out of the church, and now you are down on me. Oh, well! But you know how much I have always liked you, Daphne."

It was not the first time he had acted this character. It had been a favorite role. But Daphne had never seen the like. She was overwhelmed with happiness that he cared so much for her; and to have him reproach her for indifference, and see him suffering with the idea that she had turned against him--that instantly changed the whole situation. He had not heard then what had taken place at the dinner. Under the circumstances, feeling certain that the secret of her love had not been discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a little more.

So she turned toward him smiling, and swayed gently as she clung to the vine.

"Yes; I have my orders not even to speak to you! Never again!" she said, with the air of tantalizing.

"Then stay with me a while now," he said, and lifted slowly to her his appealing face. She sat down, and screened herself with a little feminine transparency.

"I can't stay long: it's going to rain!"

He cast a wicked glance at the sky from under his hat; there were a few clouds on the horizon.

"And so you are never going to speak to me again?" he said mournfully.

"Never!" How delicious her laughter was.

"I'll put a ring on your finger to remember me by."

He lay over in the grass and pulled several stalks. Then he lifted his eyes beseechingly to hers.

"Will you let me?"

Daphne hid her hands. He drew himself to her side and took one of them forcibly from her lap.

With a slow, caressing movement he began to braid the grass ring around her finger--in and out, around and around, his fingers laced with her fingers, his palm lying close upon her palm, his blood tingling through the skin upon her blood. He made the braiding go wrong, and took it off and began over again. Two or three times she drew a deep breath, and stole a bewildered look at his face, which was so close to hers that his hair brushed it--so close that she heard the quiver of his own breath. Then all at once he folded his hands about hers with a quick, fierce tenderness, and looked up at her. She turned her face aside and tried to draw her hand away. His clasp tightened. She snatched it away, and got up with a nervous laugh.

"Look at the butterflies! Aren't they pretty?"

He sprang up and tried to seize her hand again.

"You shan't go home yet!" he said, in an undertone.

"Shan't I?" she said, backing away from him. "Who's going to keep me?"

"_I am_," he said, laughing excitedly and following her closely.

"My father's coming!" she cried out as a warning.

He turned and looked: there was no one in sight.

"He _is_ coming--sooner or later!" she called.

She had retreated several yards off into the sunlight of the meadow.

The remembrance of the risk that he was causing her to run checked him. He went over to her.

"When can I see you again--soon?"

He had never spoken so seriously to her before. He had never before been so serious. But within the last hour Nature had been doing her work, and its effect was immediate. His sincerity instantly conquered her. Her eyes fell.

"No one has any right to keep us from seeing each other!" he insisted. "We must settle that for ourselves."

Daphne made no reply.

"But we can't meet here any more--with people passing backward and forward!" he continued rapidly and decisively. "What has happened to-day mustn't happen again."

"No!" she replied, in a voice barely to be heard. "It must never happen again. We can't meet here."

They were walking side by side now toward the meadow-path. As they reached it he paused.

"Come to the back of the pasture--to-morrow!--at four o'clock!" he said, tentatively, recklessly.

Daphne did not answer as she moved away from him along the path homeward.

"Will you come?" he called out to her.

She turned and shook her head. Whatever her own new plans may have become, she was once more happy and laughing.

"Come, Daphne!"

She walked several paces further and turned and shook her head again.

"Come!" he pleaded.

She laughed at him.

He wheeled round to his mare grazing near. As he put his foot into the stirrup, he looked again: she was standing in the same place, laughing still.

"_You_ go," she cried, waving him good-by. "There'll not be a soul to disturb you! To-morrow--at four o'clock!"

"Will you be there?" he said.

"Will you?" she answered.

"I'll be there to-morrow," he said, "and every other day till you come."

By permission of the Macmillan Company, Publishers.

OLD KING SOLOMON'S CORONATION

From 'Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances' Copyright 1891, by Harper and Brothers.

He stood on the topmost of the court-house steps, and for a moment looked down on the crowd with the usual air of official severity.

"Gentlemen," he then cried out sharply, "by an ordah of the cou't I now offah this man at public sale to the highes' biddah. He is able-bodied but lazy, without visible property or means of suppoht, an' of dissolute habits. He is therefoh adjudged guilty of high misdemeanahs, an' is to be sole into labah foh a twelvemonth. How much, then, am I offahed foh the vagrant? How much am I offahed foh ole King Sol'mon?"

Nothing was offered for old King Solomon. The spectators formed themselves into a ring around the big vagrant, and settled down to enjoy the performance.

"Staht 'im, somebody."

Somebody started a laugh, which rippled around the circle.

The sheriff looked on with an expression of unrelaxed severity, but catching the eye of an acquaintance on the outskirts, he exchanged a lightning wink of secret appreciation. Then he lifted off his tight beaver hat, wiped out of his eyes a little shower of perspiration which rolled suddenly down from above, and warmed a degree to his theme.

"Come, gentlemen," he said more suasively, "it's too hot to stan' heah all day. Make me an offah! You all know ole King Sol'mon; don't wait to be interduced. How much, then, to staht 'im? Say fifty dollahs! Twenty-five! Fifteen! Ten! Why, gentlemen! Not _ten_ dollahs? Remembah, this is the Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky--the land of Boone an' Kenton, the home of Henry Clay!" he added, in an oratorical _crescendo_.

"He ain't wuth his victuals," said an oily little tavern-keeper, folding his arms restfully over his own stomach and cocking up one piggish eye into his neighbor's face. "He ain't wuth his 'taters."

"Buy 'im foh 'is rags!" cried a young law student, with a Blackstone under his arm, to the town rag picker opposite, who was unconsciously ogling the vagrant's apparel.

"I _might_ buy 'im foh 'is _scalp_," drawled a farmer, who had taken part in all kinds of scalp contests, and was now known to be busily engaged in collecting crow scalps for a match soon to come off between two rival counties.

"I think I'll buy 'im foh a hat sign," said a manufacturer of ten-dollar Castor and Rhorum hats. This sally drew merry attention to the vagrant's hat, and the merchant felt rewarded.

"You'd bettah say the town ought to buy 'im an' put 'im up on top of the cou't-house as a scarecrow foh the cholera," said some one else.

"What news of the cholera did the stage coach bring this mohning?" quickly inquired his neighbor in his ear; and the two immediately fell into low, grave talk, forgot the auction, and turned away.

"Stop, gentlemen, stop!" cried the sheriff, who had watched the rising tide of good humor, and now saw his chance to float in on it with spreading sails. "You're runnin' the price in the wrong direction--down, not up. The law requires that he be sole to the highes' biddah, not the lowes'. As loyal citizens, uphole the constitution of the commonwealth of Kentucky an' make me an offah; the man is really a great bargain. In the first place, he would cos' his ownah little or nothin', because, as you see, he keeps himself in cigahs an' clo'es; then, his main article of diet is whisky--a supply of which he always has on ban'. He don't even need a bed, foh you know he sleeps jus' as well on any doohstep; noh a chair, foh he prefers to sit roun' on the curbstones. Remembah, too, gentlemen, that ole King Sol'mon is a Virginian--from the same neighbohhood as Mr. Clay. Remembah that he is well educated, that he is an _awful_ Whig, an' that he has smoked mo' of the stumps of Mr. Clay's cigahs than any other man in existence. If you don't b'lieve _me,_ gentlemen, yondah goes Mr. Clay now; call _him_ ovah an' ask 'im foh yo'se'ves."

He paused, and pointed with his right forefinger towards Main Street, along which the spectators, with a sudden craning of necks, beheld the familiar figure of the passing statesman.

"But you don't need _any_body to tell these fac's, gentlemen," he continued. "You merely need to be reminded that ole King Sol'mon is no ohdinary man. Mo'ovah he has a kine heaht; he nevah spoke a rough wohd to anybody in this worl', an' he is as proud as Tecumseh of his good name an' charactah. An', gentlemen," he added, bridling with an air of mock gallantry and laying a hand on his heart, "if anythin' fu'thah is required in the way of a puffect encomium, we all know that there isn't anothah man among us who cuts as wide a swath among the ladies. The'foh, if you have any appreciation of virtue, any magnanimity of heaht; if you set a propah valuation upon the descendants of Virginia, that mothah of Presidents; if you believe in the pure laws of Kentucky as the pioneer bride of the Union; if you love America an' love the worl'--make me a gen'rous, high-toned offah foh ole King Sol'mon!"

He ended his peroration amid a shout of laughter and applause, and feeling satisfied that it was a good time for returning to a more practical treatment of his subject, proceeded in a sincere tone:--

"He can easily earn from one to two dollahs a day, an' from three to six hundred a yeah. There's not anothah white man in town capable of doin' as much work. There's not a niggah ban' in the hemp factories with such muscles an' such a chest. _Look_ at 'em! An', if you don't b'lieve me, step fo'ward and _feel_ 'em. How much, then, is bid foh 'im?"

"One dollah!" said the owner of a hemp factory, who had walked forward and felt the vagrant's arm, laughing, but coloring up also as the eyes of all were quickly turned upon him. In those days it was not an unheard-of thing for the muscles of a human being to be thus examined when being sold into servitude to a new master.

"Thank you!" cried the sheriff, cheerily. "One precinc' heard from! One dollah! I am offahed one dollah foh ole King Sol'mon. One dollah foh the king! Make it a half. One dollah an' a half. Make it a half. One dol-dol-dol-dollah!"

Two medical students, returning from lectures at the old Medical Hall, now joined the group, and the sheriff explained:

"One dollah is bid foh the vagrant ole King Sol'mon, who is to be sole into labah foh a twelvemonth. Is there any othah bid? Are you all done? One dollah, once--"

"Dollah and a half," said one of the students, and remarked half jestingly under his breath to his companion, "I'll buy him on the chance of his dying. We'll dissect him."

"Would you own his body if he _should_ die?"

"If he dies while bound to me, I'll arrange _that_."

"One dollah an' a half," resumed the sheriff, and falling into the tone of a facile auctioneer he rattled on:--

"One dollah an' a half foh ole Sol'mon--sol, sol, sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol! Why, gentlemen, you can set the king to music!"

All this time the vagrant had stood in the centre of that close ring of jeering and humorous bystanders--a baffling text from which to have preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient sacred magnificence; and never had the mockery seemed so fine as at this moment, when he was led forth into the streets to receive the lowest sentence of the law upon his poverty and dissolute idleness. He was apparently in the very prime of life--a striking figure, for nature at least had truly done some royal work on him. Over six feet in height, erect, with limbs well shaped and sinewy, with chest and neck full of the lines of great power, a large head thickly covered with long, reddish hair, eyes blue, face beardless, complexion fair but discolored by low passions and excesses--such was old King Solomon. He wore a stiff, high, black Castor hat of the period, with the crown smashed in and the torn rim hanging down over one ear; a black cloth coat in the old style, ragged and buttonless; a white cotton shirt, with the broad collar crumpled wide open at the neck and down his sunburnt bosom; blue jean pantaloons, patched at the seat and the knees; and ragged cotton socks that fell down over the tops of his dusty shoes, which were open at the heels.