Chapter IV: Part 4

“No, it hasn't been. I haven't even a piquant chin.”

“That doesn't matter. What is a piquant chin, anyway?”

“You ought to know; you wrote it.”

“So I did, but I didn't know what it meant. I just knew that it ought to mean something charming, which you are.”

“I'm not. And I am not accomplished. I don't sing, I don't play, I don't draw.”

“Thanks be for that! I don't, either. But I think you are the dearest girl in the world.”

At that she turned to him and smiled a little as only Jane could smile.

“You told me that once before, a long time ago, you know.”

“And you have not forgotten?”

“No. I--you see--I didn't want to forget.”

Had it been August, or even July, doubtless a great number of vacationists would have been somewhat shocked at what Decatur did then. But it was early June, you remember, and on the far end of the Ocean Park fishing-pier were only these two, with just the dancing blue ocean in front.

“But,” she said at length, after many other and more important things had been said between them, “what will Aunt Judith say?”

“I suppose she'll think me a lucky dog--and slightly color-blind,” chuckled Decatur, joyously. “But come,” he went on, helping her to rise and retaining both her hands, swaying them back and forth clasped in his, as children do in the game of London Bridge,--“come,” he repeated, impulsively, “while my courage is high let us go and break the news to your aunt Judith.”

There was, however, no need. Looming ponderously in the middle distance of the pier's vista, a lorgnette held to her eyes, and a frozen look of horror on her ample features, was Aunt Judith herself.

A STIFF CONDITION

BY HERMAN WHITAKER

An Ontario sun shed a pleasant warmth into the clearing where Elder Hector McCakeron sat smoking. His gratified consciousness was pleasantly titillated by sights and sounds of worldly comfort. From the sty behind the house came fat gruntings; in the barn-yard hens were shrilly announcing that eggs would be served with the bacon; moreover, Janet was vigorously agitating a hoe among the potatoes to his left, while his wife performed similarly in the cabbage-garden. And what better could a man wish than to see his women profitably employed?

It was a pause in Janet's labors that gave the elder first warning of an intruder on his peace. A man was coming across the clearing--a short fellow, thick-set and bow-legged in figure, slow and heavy of face. The elder observed him with stony eyes.

“It's the Englisher,” he muttered. “What'll he be wanting wi' me?”

His accent was hostile as his glance. Since, thirty years before, a wave of red-haired Scots inundated western Ontario, no man of Saxon birth had settled in Zorra, the elder's township. That in peculiar had been held sealed as a heritage to the Scot, and when Joshua Timmins bought out Sandy Cruikshanks the township boiled and burned throughout its length and breadth.

Not that it had expected to suffer the contamination. It was simply astounded at the man's impudence. “We'll soon drum him oot!” Elder McCakeron snorted, when he heard of the invasion; to which, on learning that Timmins was also guilty of Methodism, he added, “Wait till the meenister lays claws on the beast.”

It was confidently expected that he would be made into a notable example, a warning to all intruders from beyond the pale; and the first Sunday after his arrival a full congregation turned out to see the minister do the trick. Interest was heightened by the presence of the victim, who, lacking a chapel of his own faith, attended kirk. His entrance caused a sensation. Forgetting its Sabbath manners, the congregation turned bodily and stared till recalled to its duty by the minister's cough. Then it shifted its gaze to him. What thunders were brewing behind that confident front? What lightnings lurked in the depths of those steel-gray eyes? Breathlessly Zorra had waited for the anathema which should wither the hardy intruder and drive him as chaff from a burning wind.

But it waited in vain. By the most liberal interpretation no phrase of his could be construed as a reflection on the stranger. Worse! After kirk-letting the minister hailed Timmins in the door, shook hands in the scandalized face of the congregation, and hoped that he might see him regularly at service.

Scandalous? It was irreligious! But if disappointed in its minister, Zorra had no intention of neglecting its own duty in the premises: the Englisher was not to be let off while memories of Bruce and Bannockburn lived in Scottish hearts. Which way he turned that day and in the months that followed he met dour faces. Excepting Cap'en Donald McKay, a retired mariner, whose native granite had been somewhat disintegrated by exposure to other climates, no man gave him a word;--this, of course, without counting Neil McNab, who called on Timmins three times a week to offer half-price for the farm.

With one exception, too, the women looked askance upon him, wondering, doubtless, how he dared to oppose their men-folks' wishes. Calling the cows of evenings, Janet McCakeron sometimes came on Timmins, whose farm cornered on her father's, and thus a nodding acquaintance arose between them. That she should have so demeaned herself is a matter of reproach with many, but the fair-minded who have sufficiently weighed the merits of her case are slower with their blames. For though Zorra can boast maidens who have hung in the wind till fifty and still, as the vernacular has it, “married on a man,” a girl was counted well on the way to the shelf at forty-five. Janet, be it remembered, lacked but two years of the fatal age. Already chits of thirty-five or seven were generously alluding to her as the prop of her father's age; so small wonder if she simpered instead of passing with a nifty air when Timmins spoke one evening.

His remark was simple in tenor--in effect that her bell-cow was “a wee cat-ham'ed”; but Janet scented its underlying tenderness as a hungry traveller noses a dinner on a wind, and after that drove her cows round by the corner which was conveniently veiled by heavy maple-bush. Indeed, it was to the friendly shadows which shrouded it, day or dark, that Cap'en McKay--a man wise in affairs of the heart by reason of much sailing in and out of foreign ports--afterward attributed the record which Timmins set Zorra in courting.

“He couldna see her bones, nor her his bow-legs,” the mariner phrased it. But be this as it may, whether or no each made love to a voice, Cupid ran a swift course with them, steeplechasing over obstacles that would have taken years for a Zorra lad to plod around. In less than six months they passed from a bare goodnight to the exchange of soul thoughts on butter-making, the raising of calves, fattening of swine, and methods of feeding swedes that they might not taint cow's milk, and so had progressed by such tender paths through gentle dusks to the point where Timmins was ready to declare himself in the light of this present morning.

Assured by one glance that Timmins's courage still hung at the point to which she had screwed it the preceding evening, Janet drooped again to her work.

To his remark that the potatoes were looking fine, however, the elder made no response--unless a gout of tobacco smoke could be so counted. With eyes screwed up and mouth drawn down, he gazed off into space--a Highland sphinx, a Gaelic Rhadamanthus.

His manner, however, made no impression on Timmins's stolidity. The latter's eye followed the elder's in its peregrinations till it came to rest, when, without further preliminaries, he began to unfold his suit, which in matter and essence was such as are usually put forward by those whom love has blinded.

It was really an able plea, lacking perhaps those subtilities of detail with which a Zorra man would have trimmed it, but good enough for a man who labored under the disadvantages which accrue to birth south of the Tweed and Tyne. But it did not stir the elder's sphinxlike calm. “Ha' ye done?” he inquired, without removing his gaze from the clouds; and when Timmins assented, he delivered judgment in a cloud of tobacco smoke. “Weel--ye canna ha' her.” After which he resumed his pipe and smoked placidly, wearing the air of one who has settled a difficult question forever.

But if stolid, Timmins had his fair share of a certain slow pugnacity.

“Why?” he demanded.

The elder smoked on.

“Why?”

“Weel,”--the elder spoke slowly to the clouds,--“I'm no obliged to quote chapter an' verse, but for the sake of argyment--forbye should Janet marry on an Englisher when there's good Scotchmen running loose?”

This was a “poser.” Born to a full realization of the vast gulf which providence has fixed between the Highlands and the rest of the world, Janet recognized it as such. Pausing, she leaned on her hoe, anxiously waiting, while Timmins chewed a straw and the cud of reflection.

“Yes,” he slowly answered, “they've been runnin' from 'er this twenty year.” Nodding confirmation to the brilliant rejoinder, Janet fell again to work.

But the elder was in no wise discomposed. Withdrawing one eye from the clouds, he turned it approvingly upon her hoe practice. “She's young yet,” he said, “an' a lass o' her pairts wull no go til the shelf.”

“Call three-an'-forty young?”

“Christy McDonald,” the elder sententiously replied, “marrit on Neil McNab at fifty. Janet's labor's no going to waste. An' if you were the on'y man i' Zorra, it wad behoove me to conseeder the lassie's prospects i' the next world. Ye're a Methodist.”

“Meanin',” said Timmins, when his mind had grappled with the charge, “as there's no Methodists there?”

Questions of delicacy and certain theological difficulties involved called for reflection, and the elder smoked a full minute on the question before he replied: “No, I wadna go so far as that. It stan's to reason as there's some of 'em there; on'y--I'm no so sure o' their whereaboots.”

Timmins thoughtfully scratched his head ere he came back to the charge. “Meanin' as there's none in 'eaven?”

Again the elder blew a reflective cloud over the merits of the question. “Weel,” he said, delivering himself with slow caution, “if so--it's no on record.”

Again Janet looked up, with defeat perching amid her freckles. “He's got ye this time,” her face said, and the elder's expression of placid satisfaction affirmed the same opinion. But Timmins rose to a sudden inspiration.

“In 'eaven,” he answered, “there's neither marriage nor givin' in marriage.”

“Pish, mon!” the elder snorted. “It's no a question o' marrying; it's a question o' getting theer, an' Janet's no going to do it wi' a Methodist hanging til her skirts.”

Silence fell in the clearing--silence that was broken only by the crash and tinkle of Janet's hoe as she buried Timmins under the clod. A Scotch daughter, she would bide by her father's word. Unaware of his funeral, Timmins himself stood scratching his poll.

“So you'll not give her to me?” he futilely repeated.

For the first time the elder looked toward him. “Mon, canna ye see the impossibility o' it? No, ye canna ha' her till--till”--he cast about for the limit of inconceivability--“till ye're an elder i' the Presbyterian Kirk.” He almost cracked a laugh at Timmins's sudden brightening. He had evolved the condition to drive home and clinch the ridiculous impossibility of the other's suit, and here he was, the doddered fule, taking hope! It was difficult to comprehend the workings of such a mind, and though the elder smoked upon it for half an hour after Timmins left the clearing, he failed of realization.

“Yon's a gay fule,” he said to Janet, when she answered his call to hitch the log farther into the cabin. “He was wanting to marry on you.”

“Ay?” she indifferently returned,--adding, without change of feature, “There's no lack o' fules round here.”

Meanwhile Timmins was making his way through the woods to his own place. As he walked along, the brightness gradually faded from his face, and by the time he reached the trysting-corner his mood was more in harmony with his case. His face would have graced a funeral.

Now Cap'en McKay's farm lay cheek by jowl with the elder's, and as the mariner happened to be fixing his fence at the corner, he noted Timmins's signals of distress. “Man!” he greeted, “ye're looking hipped.” Then, alluding to a heifer of Timmins's which had _bloated_ on marsh-grass the day before, he added, “The beastie didna die?” Assured that it was only a wife that Timmins lacked, he sighed relief. “Ah, weel, that's no so bad; they come cheaper. But tell us o't.”

“Hecks, lad!” he commented, on Timmins's dole, “I'd advise ye to drive your pigs til anither market.”

“Were?” Timmins asked--“w'ere'll I find one?”

“That's so.” The mariner thoughtfully shaved his jaw with a red forefinger, while his comprehensive glance took in the other's bow-legs. “There isna anither lass i' Zorra that wad touch ye with a ten-foot pole.”

Reddening, Timmins breathed hard, but the mariner met his stare with the serene gaze of one who deals in undiluted truth; so Timmins gulped and went on: “Say! I 'ear that you're mighty clever in these 'ere affairs. Can't you 'elp a feller out?”

The cap'en modestly bowed to reputation, admitting that he had assisted “a sight of couples over the broomstick,” adding, however, that the knack had its drawbacks. There were many door-stones in Zorra that he dared not cross. And he wagged his head over Timmins's case, wisely, as a lawyer ponders over the acceptance of a hopeless brief. Finally he suggested that if Timmins was “no stuck on his Methodisticals,” he might join the kirk.

“You think that would 'elp?”

The cap'en thought that, but he was not prepared to endorse Timmins's following generalization that it didn't much matter what name a man worshipped under. It penetrated down through the aforesaid rubble of disintegration and touched native granite. Stiffly enough he returned that Presbyterianism was good enough for him, but it rested on Timmins to follow the dictates of his own conscience.

Now when bathed in love's elixir conscience becomes very pliable indeed, and as the promptings of Timmins's inner self were all toward Janet, his outer man was not long in making up his mind. But though, following the cap'en's advice, he joined himself to the elect of Zorra, his change of faith brought him only a change of name.

Elder McCakeron officiated at the “christening” which took place in the crowded market the day after Timmins's name had been spread on the kirk register. “An' how is the apoos-tate the morning?” the elder inquired, meeting Timmins. And the name stuck, and he was no more known as the “Englisher.”

“Any letters for the Apoos-tate?” The postmaster would mouth the question, repeating it after Timmins when he called for his mail. Small boys yelled the obnoxious title as he passed the log school on the corner; wee girls gazed after him, fascinated, as upon one destined for a headlong plunge into the lake of fire and brimstone. Summing the situation at the close of his second month's fellowship in the kirk, Timmins confessed to himself that it had brought him only a full realization of the “stiffness” of Elder McCakeron's “condition.” He was no nearer to Janet, and never would have been but for the sudden decease of Elder Tammas Duncan.

In view of what followed, many hold that Elder Tammas made a vital mistake in dying, while a few, less charitable, maintain that his decease was positively sinful.

But if Elder Tammas be not held altogether blameless in the premises, what must be said of Saunders McClellan, who loaded himself with corn-juice and thereby sold himself to the fates? Saunders was a bachelor of fifty and a misogynist by repute. Twenty years back he had paid a compliment to Jean Ross, who afterward married on Rab Murray. It was not a flowery effort; simply to the effect that he, Saunders, would rather sit by her, Jean, than sup oatmeal brose. But though he did not soar into the realms of metaphor, the compliment seems to have been a strain on Saunders's intellect, to have sapped his being of tenderness; for after paying it he reached for his hat and fled, and never again placed himself in such jeopardy.

“Man!” he would exclaim, when, at threshing or logging bees, hairbreadth escapes from matrimony cropped up in the conversation,--“man! but I was near done for yon time!” And yet, all told, Saunders's dry bachelorhood seems to have been caused by an interruption in the flow rather than a drying up of his wells of feeling, as was proven by his conduct coming home from market the evening he overloaded with “corn-juice.”

For as he drove by Elder McCakeron's milk-yard, which lay within easy hailing distance of the gravel road, Saunders bellowed to Janet: “Hoots, there! Come awa, my bonnie bride! Come awa to the meenister!” In front of her mother and Sib Sanderson, the cattle-buyer--who was pricing a fat cow,--Saunders thus committed himself, then drove on, chuckling over his own daring.

“Ye're a deevil! man, ye're a deevil!” he told himself, giving his hat a rakish cock. “Ye're a deevil wi' the weemen, a sair deceever.”

He did feel that way--just then. But when, next morning, memory disentangled itself from a splitting headache, Saunders's red hair bristled at the thought of his indiscretion. It was terrible! He, Saunders, the despair of the girls for thirty years, had fallen into a pit of his own digging! He could but hope it a nightmare; but as doubt was more horrible than certainty, he dressed and walked down the line to McCakeron's.

Once again he found Janet at the milking; or rather, she had just turned the cows into the pasture, and as she waited for him by the bars, Saunders thought he had never seen her at worse advantage. The sharp morning air had blued her nose, and he was dimly conscious that the color did not suit her freckles.

“Why, no!” she said, answering his question as to whether or no he had not acted a bit foolish the night before. “You just speired me to marry on you. Said I'd been in your eye this thirty years.”

In a sense this was true. He had cleared from her path like a bolting rabbit, but gallantry forbade that manifest explanation. “'Twas the whuskey talking,” he pleaded. “Ye'll no hold me til a drunken promise?”

But he saw, even before she spoke, that she would.

“'Deed but I will!” she exclaimed, tossing her head. “An' them says ye were drunken will ha' to deal wi' me. Ye were sober as a sermon.”

Though disheartened, Saunders tried another tack. “Janet,” he said, solemnly, “I dinna think as a well-brought lass like you wad care to marry on a man like me. I'm terrible i' the drink. I might beat ye.”

Janet complacently surveyed an arm that was thick as a club from heavy choring. “I'll tak chances o' that.”

Saunders's heart sank into his boots; but, wiping the sweat from his brow, he made one last desperate effort: “But ye're promised to the--the--Apoos-tate.”

“I am no. Father broke that off.”

Saunders shot his last bolt. “I believe I'm fickle, Janet. There'll be a sair heart for the lass that marries me. I wouldna wonder if I jilted ye.”

“Then,” she calmly replied, “I'll haul ye into the justice coort for breach o' promise.”

With this terrible ultimatum dinging in his ears Saunders fled. Zorra juries were notoriously tender with the woman in the case, and he saw himself stripped of his worldly goods or tied to the apron of the homeliest girl in Zorra. One single ray illumined the dark prospect. That evening he called on Timmins, whom he much astonished by the extent and quality of his advice and encouragement. He even went so far as to invite the Englisher to his own cabin, thereby greatly scandalizing his housekeeper--a maiden sister of fifty-two, who had forestalled fate by declaring for the shelf at forty-nine.

“What'll he be doing here?” the maiden demanded, indicating Timmins with accusatory finger on the occasion of his first visit. But his meekness and the propitiatory manner in which he sat on the very edge of his chair, hat gripped between his knees, mollified her so much that she presently produced a bowl of red-cheeked apples for his refreshment.

But her thawing did not save Saunders after the guest was gone. “There's always a fule in every family,” she cried, when he had explained his predicament, “an' you drained the pitcher.”

“But you'll talk Janet to him,” Saunders urged, “an' him to her? She's that hard put to it for a man that wi' a bit steering she'll consent to an eelopement.”

But, bridling, Jeannie tossed a high head. “'Deed, then, an' I'll no do ither folk's love-making.”

“Then,” Saunders groaned, “I'll ha' the pair of ye in this hoose.”

This uncomfortable truth gave Jeannie pause. The position of maiden sister carried with it more chores than easements, and Jeannie was not minded to relinquish her present powers. For a while she seriously studied the stove, then her face cleared; she started as one who suddenly sees her clear path, and giving Saunders a queer look, she said: “Ah, weel, you're my brother, after all. I'll do my best wi' both. Tell the Englisher as I'll be pleased to see him any time in the evening.”

Matters were at this stage when Elder McCakeron's cows committed their dire trespass on Neil McNab's turnips.

Who would imagine that such unlike events as Saunders McClellan's lapse from sobriety, the death of Elder Duncan, and the trespass of McCakeron's cows could have any bearing upon one another? Yet from their concurrence was born the most astounding hap in the Zorra chronicles. Even if Elder McCakeron had paid Neil's bill of damage instead of remarking that he “didna see as the turnips had hurt his cows,” the thing would have addled in the egg; and his recalcitrancy, so necessary to the hatching, has caused many a wise pow to shake over the inscrutability of Providence. But the elder did not pay, and in revenge Neil placed Peter Dunlop, the elder's ancient enemy, in nomination for Tammas Duncan's eldership.

It was Saunders McClellan who carried the news to the McCakeron homestead. According to her promise, Jeannie had visited early and late with Janet; and dropping in one evening to check up her report of progress, Saunders found the elder perched on a stump.

Saunders discharged him of his news, which dissipated the elder's calm as thunder shatters silence.

“What?” he roared. “Yon scunner? Imph! I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect”--_the devil_ quivered back of his teeth, but as that savored of irreverence, he substituted “the Apoostate!”

Right here a devil entered in unto Saunders McClellan--the mocking devil whose mission it was to abase Zorra to the dust. But it did not make its presence known until, next day, Saunders carried the news of Elder McCakeron's retaliation to Cap'en McKay's pig-killing.

“He's going,” Saunders informed the cap'en and Neil McNab between pigs,--“he's going to run Sandy 'Twenty-One' against your candidate.”

Now between Neil and Sandy lay a feud which had its beginnings what time the latter _doctored_ a spavined mare and sold her for a price to the former's cousin Rab.

“Yon scunner?” Neil exclaimed, using the very form of the elder's words, “yon scunner? I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect ...”

“... the Apoos-tate,” said the Devil, though Neil thought that Saunders was talking.

“Ay, the Apoos-tate,” he agreed.

“It wad be a fine joke,” the Devil went on by the mouth of Saunders, “to run the Apoos-tate agin' his candidate. McCakeron canna thole the man.”

“But what if he was elected?” the mariner objected.

The Devil was charged with glib argument. “We couldna very weel. It's to be a three-cornered fight, an' Robert Duncan, brother to Tammas, has it sure.”

“'Twad be a good one on McCakeron,” Neil mused. “To talk up Dunlop, who doesna care a cent for the eldership, an' then spring the Apoos-tate on him.”

“'Twould be bitter on 'Twenty-One,'” the cap'en added. He had been diddled by Sandy on a deal of seed-wheat.

“It wad hit the pair of 'em,” McNab chuckled, and with that word the Devil conquered.

So far, as aforesaid, Saunders had been unconscious of the Devil, but going home the latter revealed himself in a heart-to-heart talk. “Ye're no pretty to look at,” Saunders said. “I'm minded to throw ye oot!”

The Devil chuckled. “Janet's so bonny. Fancy her on the pillow beside, ye--scraggy--bones--freckles. Hoots, man! a nightmare!”

Shuddering, Saunders reconsidered proceedings of ejectment. “But the thing is no posseeble?”

“You know your men,” the Devil answered. “Close in the mouth as they are in the fist. McCakeron will never get wind o' the business till they spring it on him in meeting.”

“That is so,” Saunders acknowledged. “'Tis surely so-a.”

“Then why,” the Devil urged,--“then why not rig the same game on him?”

“Bosh! He wouldna think o't.”

“Loving Dunlop as himself?” The Devil was apt at paraphrasing Scripture. “Imph!”

“It _would_ let me out?” Saunders mused.

“Ye can but fail,” argued the Devil. “Try it.”

“I wull.”

“This very night!” It is a wonder that the sparks did not fly, the Devil struck so hard on the hot iron. “To-night! Ye ken the election comes off next week.”

“To-night,” Saunders agreed.

Throughout that week the din of contending factions resounded beneath brazen harvest skies; for if there was a wink behind the clamor of any faction, it made no difference in the volume of its noise. Wherever two men foregathered, there the spirit of strife was in their midst; the burr of hot Scot's speech travelled like the murmur of robbed bees along the Side Lines, up the Concession roads, and even raised an echo in the hallowed seclusion of the minister's study. And harking back to certain eldership elections in which the breaking of heads had taken the place of “anointing with oil,” Elder McIntosh quietly evolved a plan whereby the turmoil should be left outside the kirk on election night.

But while it lasted no voice rang louder than that of Saunders McClellan's devil. Not a bit particular in choice of candidates, he roared against Dunlop, Duncan, or “Twenty-One” according to the company which Saunders kept. “Ye havna the ghaist of a show!” he assured Cap'en McKay, chief of the Dunlopers. “McCakeron drew three mair to him last night.” While to the elder he exclaimed the same day: “Yon crazy sailorman's got all the Duncanites o' the run. He has ye spanked, Elder. Scunner the deil!” So the Devil blew, hot and cold, with Saunders's mouth, until the very night before the election.

The morning of the election the sun heaved up on a brassy sky. It was intensely hot through the day, but towards evening gray clouds scudded out of the east, veiling the sun with their twisting masses; at twilight heavy rain-blots were splashing the dust. At eight o'clock, meeting-time, rain flew in glistening sheets against the kirk windows and forced its way under the floor. There was but a scant attendance--twoscore men, perhaps, and half a dozen women, who sat, in decent Scotch fashion, apart from the men--that is, apart from all but Joshua Timmins. Not having been raised in the decencies as observed in Zorra, he had drifted over to the woman's side and sat with Janet McCakeron and Jean McClellan, one on either side.

But if few in number, the gathering was decidedly formidable in appearance. As the rain had weeded out the feeble, infirm, and pacifically inclined, it was distinctly belligerent in character. Grim, dour, silent, it waited for the beginning of hostilities.

Nor did the service of praise which preceded the election induce a milder spirit. When the precentor led off, “Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let the Heathen Rage and Cry!” each man's look told that he knew well whom the psalmist was hitting at; and when the minister invoked the “blind, stubborn, and stony-hearted” to “depart from the midst,” one-half of his hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told that all were bracing for battle when the minister stepped down from the pulpit, and noting it, he congratulated himself on his precautions against disturbance.

“For greater convenience in voting,” he said, reaching paper slips and a box of pencils from behind the communion rail, “we will depart from the oral method and elect by written ballot.”

He had expected a protest against such a radical departure from ancestral precedent, but in some mysterious way the innovation seemed to jibe with the people's inclination.

“Saunders McClellan,” the minister went on, “will distribute and collect balloting-papers on the other aisle.”

“Give it to him, Cap'en!” Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip. “He's glowering at ye.”

The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. “See what I'm aboot!” his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into Saunders's hat.

“The auld deevil!” McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first ballot. “He'll soon slacken his gills.”

“That'll be one of oor ballots,” the cap'en hoarsely confided.

The minister was vigorously rubbing his glasses for a second perusal of the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.

Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.

“McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?”

“Ah,” Neil muttered. “An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the reptile. See the glare o't.”

They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the “glare.” “Got the Duncanites, did ye?” the elder was thinking. “Bide a wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last.”

Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the kirk. “You may be ugly, but ye've served me well,” Saunders began.

The Devil answered with extreme politeness: “You are welcome to all ye get through me. If no honored, ye are at least aboot to become famous in your ain country.”

“Infamous, I doobt, ye mean,” Saunders corrected. Then, glancing uneasily toward the door, he added, “I think as we'd better be leaving.”

“Pish!” the Devil snorted. “They are undone by their ain malignancy. See it oot.”

“That's so,” Saunders agreed. “That is surely so-a. Hist! The meenister's risen. Man, but he's tickled to death over the result. His face is fair shining.”

The minister did indeed look pleased. Stepping down to the floor that he might be closer to these his people, he beamed benevolently upon them while he made a little speech. “People of Scottish birth,” he said, closing, “are often accused of being hard and uncharitable to the stranger in their gates, but this can never be said of you who have extended the highest honor in your gift to a stranger; who have elected Brother Joshua Timmins elder in your kirk by a two-thirds majority.”

The benediction dissolved the paralysis which held all but Saunders McClellan; but stupefaction remained. Astounding crises are generally attended with little fuss, from the inability of the human intellect to grasp their enormous significance. As John “Death” McKay afterward put it, “Man, 'twas so extraordin'ry as to seem ordin'ry.” Of course neither Dunlopers nor “Twenty-One's” were in a position to challenge the election, and if the Duncanites growled as they pawed over the ballots, their grumbling was presently silenced by a greater astonishment.

For out of such evenings history is made. While the minister had held forth on the rights and duties of eldership, Saunders McClellan's gaze had wandered over to Margaret McDonald--a healthy, red-cheeked girl--and he had done a little moralizing on his own account. In the presence of such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, he might as weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts. Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins--meek, mild, and unencumbered--there could be no choice. Still there was nothing like certainty; 'twas always best to be off wi' the old, an' so forth!

Rising, he headed for Janet, who, with her father, Jeannie, Timmins, and the minister, stood talking at the vestry door. As he made his way forward, he reaped a portion of the Devil's promised fame. As they filed sheepishly down the aisle, the Dunlopers gave him the cold shoulder, and when he joined the group, Elder McCakeron returned a stony stare to his greeting.

“But ye needna mind that,” the Devil encouraged. “He daurna tell, for his own share i' the business.”

So Saunders brazened it out. “Ye ha' my congratulations, Mr. McCakeron. I hear you're to get a son-in-law oot o' this?”

If Elder McCakeron had given Saunders the tempter the glare which he now bestowed on Saunders the successfully wicked, he had not been in such lamentable case.

“Why, what is this?” the minister exclaimed. “Cause for further congratulation, Brother Timmins?”

Saunders now shone as Cupid's assistant. “He was to ha' Janet on condeetion that he made the eldership,” he fulsomely explained.

The minister's glance questioned the elder.

“Well,” he growled, “I'm no going back on my word.”

Saunders glowed all over, and in exuberance of spirit actually winked at Margaret McDonald across the kirk. Man, but she was pretty!

“It's to your credit, Mr. McCakeron, that you should hold til a promise,” Jeannie was saying. “But ye'll no be held. A man may change his mind, and since you refused Joshua, he's decided to marry on me.”

Saunders blenched. He half turned to flee, but Janet's strong fingers closed on his sleeve; and as her lips moved to claim him before minister and meeting, he thought that he heard the Devil chuckling, a great way off.

IN THE INTERESTS OF CHRISTOPHER

BY MAY HARRIS

Mrs. Manstey's big country-house was temporarily empty of the guests she had gathered for a week-end in June when the two Eversley girls reached it, Saturday at noon. Their hostess met them at the door when the carriage wheels crunched on the gravelled curve of the drive before the house--a charming gray-haired woman of sixty, with a youthful face and a delicate girlish color.

“I've sent everybody away to explore--to ravage the country,” she gayly explained the emptiness of the large hall, where the grouped chairs seemed recently vacated and pleasantly suggestive of suspended tête-à-tête. “I've had Rose before,” Mrs. Manstey pursued, taking them up the stairs to their rooms, “but not _you!_” She gave Edith's shoulder an affectionate little pat. She thought the younger girl extremely beautiful--which she was, with a vivid, piquant face and charming eyes.

“I've had my day,” Rose Eversley acknowledged, with her usual air of jesting gravity, that, almost ironic, made one always a little unsure of her. “Dear Mrs. Manstey, you perfectly see--don't you?--that Edith is papa's image, and--”

“And he was my old sweetheart!” Mrs. Manstey completed, with humorous appreciation of her own repetition of an old story.

“Was he, really?” Edith wondered. “Mamma says you were _her_ friend.”

Mrs. Manstey laughed. “Couldn't I have been--both?” she gayly put it. “Friends are better than sweethearts--they last longer. Though of course you won't agree, at your age, to such heresy.”

“Sweethearts?” the girl pondered as she lifted her hands to take off her hat. “I--don't know. It's such a pretty word, but it doesn't mean much these days--there aren't any!” She shrugged her shoulders with a petulant pessimism her youth made amusing. “Papa was the last of the kind--he's a _love!_--and you let mamma have him!”

“I didn't 'let.'” Mrs. Manstey enjoyed it. “When he met your mother he forgot all about me. Think of it! I haven't seen either him or your mother in years, years, years!”

“_My_ years!” Edith said. “I was a baby, mamma says, when she saw you last.”

“So you were.”

A servant knocked, with a note for Mrs. Manstey. As she took it and turned to leave the room, her smile, caressingly including Rose, went past her and lingered a thought longer--as people's smiles had a way of doing--with Edith.

“I know you're tired,” she added to her smile. “Five hours of train--Get into something cool and rest. Luncheon isn't until two.”

She disappeared, and Rose looked at her sister, who, with her hat in her hand, was going into her room.

“Well--?” Rose lifted her voice in its faint drawl of interrogation.

Edith looked at her absently. “I don't know,” she said, drawing her straight brows into a puzzled frown. “I'm as far away as ever--I'm so perplexed.”

“Well--you'll _have_ to decide, you know.”

Edith shook her head impatiently and went into her room, closing the door. She hurried out of her dusty travelling things into cool freshness, and, settled in the most comfortable chair, gave herself up to an apparently endless fit of musing. She was so physically content that her mind refused to respond with any vigorous effort; to think at all was a crumpled rose-leaf.

From the lower hall the clock chimed one with musical vibrations. Edith leaned forward with her chin on her hand, driving her thoughts into a definite path. The curtains stirred in a breeze from the out-of-doors whose domain swept with country greenness and adventitious care away from the window under the high brilliance of the sun.

Close to the window a writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision, it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out some note-paper, went to the table and began to write a letter.

What she had to say seemed difficult to decide. She wrote a line, stared out of the window with fixity, and then wrote again--a flurry of quick, decisive strokes as if at determinate pressure. But a sigh struck across her mood, and almost against her will the puzzled crinkle returned to her brow. The curtain blew against her face, disarranging her hair, and as she lifted her hand to put back a straggling lock, the wind tossed the sheet of the letter she was writing out of the window. Her eyes, as she sprang up, followed its flight, but it whirled around the corner of the house and was lost to her desperate gaze.

Négligé, even of the most-becoming description, was not to be thought of in pursuing the loss, for the silence of the house had stirred to the sound of gay voices, the movement of feet.

Rose, also in négligé, opened the door between them and found her madly tearing off her pale-blue kimono. “What's the matter?” She paused, staring.

“Heavens! My shoes--please!--there by the table.” She kicked off her ridiculous blue slippers and pulled on the small colonials her sister in open wonder handed her. “If you had only been dressed,” she almost wailed, “you might have been able to get it.”

“Get what?”

“My letter!” Tragic, in spite of a mouthful of pins--which is a woman's undoubted preference, no matter how many befrilled pincushions entreat a division of spoils,--she turned her face with its import of sudden things to her sister in explanation. “I was writing a letter and it blew out of the window!”

“Well, if it did--”

“But, don't you see?--I was writing to _Christopher!_ I had been thinking and thinking, and at last I screwed up my courage to answer his letter. I had all but signed my name!”

Rose Eversley began to laugh helplessly; heartlessly, her sister thought.

“If you hadn't signed it--” she at last comforted her sister's indignant face that was reflected from the mirror, where she stood as she fastened the white stock at her throat and snapped the clasp of her belt.

“Signed it!” She was almost in tears. “What difference will that make when I claim the letter? I _must_ find it! But of course some one who knows me will be sure to find it. And _that_ letter, of all letters!”

“If I were you, Edith,” Rose advised, calmly, “I shouldn't--”

“Well?”--with her hand on the door-knob.

“--try to find it. It will be impossible to trace it to you, in that case.”

“But _don't_ you see--”

“Wait!” Rose caught and pulled her back. “How _could_ they know? You'll get in much deeper. What had you written?”

“I said, 'Dear Christopher'--”

Rose laughed. “I'm glad you didn't say 'Dear Mr. Brander.' In that case you'd have given _him_ away. But 'Christopher' is such an unusual name, they might--Sherlock Holmes could trace him by it alone.”

“You _are_ a Job's comforter--a perfect Eliphaz the Temanite! Oh, oh!” Her soft crescendo was again tragic.

“In effect you said: 'Dear Christopher, as you have so often entreated, I have at last decided to be thine. The tinkle of thy shekels, now that I am so nearly shekelless myself, has done its fatal worst. I am thine--'”

“Oh, let me go!” Edith cried, in a fury close to tears. “You haven't any feeling. You are not going to sacrifice _your_self!”

“To a good-looking young man who loves me exceedingly, and to something over a million? No, I am not!” Rose said, dryly.

“Oh, it's dreadful! Perfectly!” Edith cried, and on her indecision Rose hung another bit of wisdom:

“Why don't you go down in a leisurely way and investigate? You know the direction it blew away; follow it. If you meet any one, be admiring the scenery!”

Again Edith's look deserved the foot-lights, but Rose shrugged her shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the right came a click of billiard-balls.

“Perhaps they are all in the house!” she thought, and drew a small breath of relief.

On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully careless.

The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond, and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper rewarded her gaze.

She strolled on--daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing her hair out of order--to the door of the summer-house. Within it a young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant mouth.

She hesitated, the words “That is my letter!” absolutely frozen on her lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it, and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the doorway--

Half light, half shade--

framing herself and her white umbrella.

“You are looking for a cool spot?”--he deprecatingly took the initiative. “This is a good choice. There's a wind--”

“Horrid!” she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary surprise. “I don't like the wind,” she added.

“'It's an ill wind,' you know, 'that doesn't blow some one good.'”

“I assure you _this_ is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it could.”

“Do come out of it,” he begged. “The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour until luncheon,” he added, “unless they've changed since I was here last.” He put up his watch. “We're fellow guests. You came this morning, didn't you?--while we were out. I came last night.”

She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered. But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the “Dear Christopher,” in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.

Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And trees!--there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.

“Mrs. Manstey,” he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the burden of conversation, “sent some of us out riding this morning, and Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he took the short cut. _We_ gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps.”

“If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence,” she said, boastfully, and then laughed. He laughed too.

“If I--if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey on horseback. He's utterly reckless.”

“So am I,” she came in, with spirit. “At home I ride anything and jump everything.”

“Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister,” he repeated, decisively.

“I'm sorry for your sister,” she declared.

“Well, you see, I haven't one,” he said, gayly, and smiled down at her lifted face. Remembering the letter, she corrected her expression to colder lines.

“There's no one to introduce us,”--he broke the pause. “Mayn't I--” He colored and put his hand into his pocket, and taking out her letter, folded the blank sheet out and produced a pencil. “It's hard to call one's own name,” he continued. “Suppose we write our names?”

As he was clumsy in finesse, she understood his idea, and her eyes flashed. But she said nothing as he scribbled and handed the paper to her. She read, “C.K. Farringdon,” and played with the pencil.

“Mr. Farringdon,”--she said it over meditatively. “How plainly you write! My name's Edith Eversley,” she added, tranquilly, and, because she must, per force, returned the sheet to him. She had a wicked delight in the defeat of his strategy which she could cleverly conceal.

“I wish,” he deprecated, gently, but with persistence, “that you would write your name here--won't you, as a souvenir?”

But she shook her head and rose--angry, which she hid, but also amused at his pertinacity.

“I can't write decently with a pencil,” she said, carelessly, and her eyes followed his hand putting the letter back into his pocket. That she should have actually had the letter in her hand, and had to give it back! But no quick-witted pretext had occurred to help her. Rose would think her stupid--utterly lacking in expedients.

She left the summer-house, unfurling her umbrella, and Farringdon followed instantly, his failure apparently forgotten.

They passed the tennis-court on their way to the house, and--

“Do you play?” he asked.

“A little.” Her intonation mocked the formula.

“Might we, then, this afternoon--”

She gave him a side glance. “If you don't mind losing,” she suggested.

“But I play to win,” he modestly met it, and again they laughed.

Rose Eversley looked with curiosity at her sister when she entered the dining-room for luncheon, followed by Farringdon, but Edith's face was non-committal. She was bright and vivacious, and made herself very pleasant to Farringdon, who sat by her. After luncheon they went to the tennis-court together.

“A delightful young man,” Mrs. St. Cleve commented, putting up her lorgnette as she stood at the window with Rose, watching their disappearing figures, “but so far as money is concerned, a hopeless detrimental. Don't let your pretty sister get interested in him. He hasn't a cent except what he makes--he's an architect.”

“Edith is to be depended upon,” Rose said, enigmatically. She was five years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith had put on long dresses.

“Have you written to Christopher?” she asked, that night, invading Edith's room with her hair-brushes.

“No, I haven't,” Edith said, thoughtfully. “I tried just now. It seems--I don't know how, exactly, but I just _can't_ write it over again! If I had the letter I wrote this morning, I suppose I would send it; but to write it all over again--it's too horrible!”

“'Horrible'!” Rose repeated. “Very few people would think it that! He's rich, thoroughly good, and devoted to you.”

“You put the least last,” Edith said, slowly, “and you're right. I'm not sure Christopher is so devoted to me, after all. He may only fancy that I like him, and from his high estate--”

“Nonsense!” Rose said, warmly. “He isn't, as you know, that sort of a man. I've known him for years--” She paused.

Edith said nothing; she brushed her hair with careful slowness.

“He is so sincere--so straight-forward,” Rose went on, in an impersonal tone; “and as papa has had so much ill luck and our circumstances have changed--they _are_ changed, you know, though we are still able to keep up a certain appearance--he has been unchanged. You ought to consider--”

“You consider Christopher's interests altogether,” Edith said. “I've some, too.”

“Oh no! You needn't think of them with Christopher,” Rose said, seriously. “That's just it! He would so completely look after _yours!_ It's _his_, in this regard, that need consideration.”

“Well--I'll consider Christopher's interests,” Edith said, quietly.

She remembered perfectly the letter she had written--which was in an ugly young man's pocket! It had been:

“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--Do you think you really want me? If you are very sure, I am willing. I don't care for anybody else, so perhaps I can learn to care for you.

“The only thing is, you will spoil me, and they've done that at home already! and Rose says I need a strong hand! So in your interests--” and then it had blown away!

When Rose, after some desultory talk, went back to her room, Edith wrote another letter:

“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--I know you have made a mistake. I don't care for you--to marry you--a bit, but I like you, oh, a quantity! We have always been such friends, and we always will be, won't we? but not _that_ way.

“Some day you will be very happy with some one else who will suit you better. Then you will know how right I am.

“With kindest wishes,

“EDITH EVERSLEY.”

She took this letter down the next morning to put in the bag, but the postman had come and gone. As she stood in the hall holding the letter, Farringdon came up.

“Good morning,” he said. “You've missed the postman? I will be very happy to post it for you on my way to church.”

“Thank you. But if it's on the way to church, I'm going myself, so I needn't trouble you.”

Farringdon merely bowed, without saying anything banal about the absence of trouble. She was demurely conscious beneath his courtesy of the effort he was making to see her handwriting, and she wondered if he thought her refusal rude and a confirmation of his suspicion, or simply casual.

Whatever he thought, it did not prevent the steps as she came out a few hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella, prayer-book, and an unobtrusive white envelope in her hands.

They were going together down then drive--under his umbrella--before she quite grasped the situation.

“We seem to be the only ones,” she hazarded.

“We are,” he nodded.

“Mrs. Manstey has a headache,” Edith said, “but the others--”

“The sun is too hot!”--he smiled.

“But you--I shouldn't have thought--” She paused, a little embarrassed.

“Yes?” he helped her. “That I was one of those who go to church, you mean?”

“Oh no!” she protested; but it was what she had meant.

“You are right,” he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. “I'm not in the least a scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I--” he hesitated. “Do you remember a little verse:

'Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.'”

Her face flushed. “But,” she reverted, with naïveté, “you said you were going to church--”

“But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!” he said, positively.

She rebelled. “I don't look devotional at all!”