Chapter VIII: Part 8

Burchard had disappeared--how, nobody knew. Weeks afterward a stranger passing through Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such a man on a keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi, and it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found a home in New Orleans, that refuge of broken adventurers. Why he had fled no one could guess.

_CHAPTER XXVIII._

PATTY AND HER PATIENT.

We left Patty standing irresolute in the road. The latch-string of her father's house was drawn in; she must find another home. Every Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course; Colonel Wheeler would be only too glad to receive her. But Colonel Wheeler and all the Methodist people were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's foes. She did not want to foreclose every door to a reconciliation. Mrs. Goodwin's was not to be thought of. There was but one place, and that was with Kike's mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative, was naturally her first resort in exile.

Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she found the schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow, though neither he nor she dared think of marriage with Kike's awful displeasure in the back-ground.

"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty had received permission to stay in the cabin of her aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how sthrange things comes to pass, Miss Lumsden. You turned Moirton off yersilf fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits sint adrift." Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish Moirton noo, now don't oi? Revinge is swate, and this sort of revinge would be swater on many accounts."

The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady looked out of the window and continued, in a sort of soliloquy: "Moirton would be _that_ glad. Ha! ha! He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better thrick than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out. It'll simplify matters fer Moirton. A sum's aisier to do when its simplified, loike. An' now it'll be as aisy to Moirton when he hears about it, as twice one is two--as simple as puttin' two halves togither to make a unit." Here the master rubbed his hands in glee. He was pleased with the success of his illustration. Then he muttered: "They'll agree in ginder, number and parson!"

"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."

"Make fun of ye! Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint in yer ould schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've done yer dooty. I was only throyin' to congratilate ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate the whole thing whin he hears about it."

"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up with her old pride, "I know there will be those who will say that I joined the church to get Morton back, I want you to say that Morton is to be married--was probably married to-day--and that I knew of it some days ago."

Brady's countenance fell. "Things niver come out roight," he said, as he absently put on his hat. "They talk about spicial providinces," he soliloquized, as he walked away, "and I thought as I had caught one at last. But it does same sometoimes as if a bluntherin' Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better if he had aholt of the stairin' oar. But, psha! Oi've only got one or two pets of me own to look afther. God has to git husbands fer ivery woman ixcipt the old maids. An' some women has to have two, of which I hope is the Widdy Lumsden! But Mithodism upsets iverything. Koike's so religious that he can't love anybody but God, and he don't know how to pity thim that does. And Koike's made us both mortally afeard of his goodness. I wish he'd fall dead in love himself once; thin he'd know how it fales!"

Patty soon found that her father could not brook her presence in the neighborhood, and that the widow's hospitality to her was resented as an act of hostility to him. She accordingly set herself to find some means of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the same time of earning her living.

Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder to a quarterly meeting on the circuit to which Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing of Patty's case, he proposed to get her employment as a teacher. He had heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood of the Hickory Ridge church, where the conference had met. So Patty was settled as a teacher. For ten hours a day she showed children how to "do sums," heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic" department of the old English Reader, and taught them spelling from the "a-b abs" to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty" and its octopedal companions. And she boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian ex-minister, when he learned that she was Kike's cousin, and a sufferer for her religion, insisted that her Sundays should be passed in his house. And being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the people, he soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors among the poor and the sick. Something of good-breeding and refinement there was in her manner that made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans who had moved into the hollows, and her kindness was all the more grateful on account of her dignity. She was "a grand lady," they declared, and besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in her way of tendin' folks what's sick." They loved to tell how "she nussed Bill Turner's wife through the awfulest spell of the yaller janders you ever seed; an' toted _Miss_ Cole's baby roun' all night the night her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm with his own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness. She's better'n forty doctors, root or calomile."

One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house door just as the long spelling-class had broken up, and Patty was getting ready to send the children home. The doctor sat on his horse while each of the boys, with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other, walked to the door, and, after the fashion of those good old days, turned round and bowed awkwardly at the teacher. Some bobbed their heads forward on their breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more respectful, bent their bodies into crescents. Each seemed alike glad when he was through with this abominable bit of ceremony, the only bit of ceremony in the whole round of their lives. The girls, in short linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes, came after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would have bewildered a dancing-master.

"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher appeared, "I am sorry to see you so tired. I want you to go home with me. I have some work for you to do to-morrow."

There were no buggies in that day. The roads were mostly bridle-paths, and those that would admit wagons would have shaken a buggy to pieces. Patty climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor rode as close as possible to the fence where she stood. Then she dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two rode off together.

Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange man was lying wounded at the house of a family named Barkins, on Higgins's Run. The man refused to give his name, and the family would not tell what they knew about him. As Barkins bore a bad reputation, it was quite likely that the stranger belonged to some band of thieves who lived by horse-stealing and plundering emigrants. He seemed to be in great mental anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor. The doctor therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at Barkins's, and do what she could for the patient. "It is our business to do the man good," said Doctor Morgan, "not to have him arrested. Gospel is always better than Law."

On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled with a side-saddle for Patty, and he and she rode to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky glen, where once lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its name, and where now resided a man who was suspected of giving much indirect assistance to the gangs of thieves that infested the country, though he was too lame to be actively engaged in any bold enterprises.

Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty as she crossed the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a square-shouldered, raw-boned woman, looked half inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over her door-sill. Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her frame at the thought of staying in such a place all day; but Doctor Morgan had an authoritative way with such people. When called to attend a patient, he put the whole house under martial law.

"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better. He needs a good deal done for him to-day, and I brought the school-mistress to help you, knowing you had a houseful of children and plenty of work."

"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan, but you had orter know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss in to spy out a body's housekeepin' 'thout givin' folks half a chance to bresh up a little. I 'low she haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth ten of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled ole man." She sulkily brushed off a stool with her apron and offered it to Patty. But Patty, with quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while the doctor went into the only other room of the house to see the patient, she seized upon the woman's dish-towel and went to wiping the yellow crockery as Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the crabbed remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell how she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little, and how she had upset the table and spilt everything on the floor. She looked into Mrs. Barkins's face with so much friendly confidence, her laugh had so much assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded to show her increasing friendliness by boxing "Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too closte to the lady and starrin at her that a-way."

Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and beckoned to Patty.

"I've brought you the only medicine that will do you any good," he said, rapidly, to the sick man. "This is Miss Lumsden, our school-mistress, and the best hand in sickness you ever saw. She will stay with you an hour."

The patient turned his wan face over and looked wearily at Patty. He seemed to be a man of forty, but suffering and his unshorn beard had given him a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger. He had evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he looked about the room for a seat for Patty. "I'll take care of myself," said Patty, cheerfully--seeing his anxious desire to be polite.

"I will write down some directions for you," said Dr. Morgan, taking out pencil and paper. When he handed the directions to Patty they read:

"I leave you a lamb among wolves. But the Shepherd is here! It is the only chance to save the poor fellow's life or his soul. I will send Nettie over in an hour with jelly, and if you want to come home with her you can do so. I will stop at noon."

With that he bade her good-bye and was gone. Patty put the room in order, wiped off the sick man's temples, and he soon fell into a sleep. When he awoke she again wiped his face with cold water. "My mother used to do that," he said.

"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.

"I think not. I have been a bad man, and it is a wonder that I didn't break her heart. I would like to see her!"

"Where is she?" asked Patty.

The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's the use of bringing my disgrace home to her door?" he said.

"But I think she would bear your disgrace and everything else for the sake of wiping your face as I do."

"I believe she would," said the wounded man, tremulously. "I would like to go to her, and ever since I came away I have meant to go as soon as I could get in the way of doing better. But I get worse all the time. I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care how soon. The sooner the better;" and he sighed wearily.

Patty had the tact not to contradict him.

"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.

"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and I used to run away to keep from hearing it. I'd give everything to hear her read now."

"Shall I read to you?"

"If you please."

"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?" said Patty.

"How do you know which that is?--I don't!"

"Don't you think one woman knows how another woman feels?" asked Patty. And she sat by the little four-light window and took out her pocket Testament and read the three immortal parables in the fifteenth of Luke. The man's curiosity was now wide awake; he listened to the story of the sheep lost and found, but when Patty glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied; he hearkened to the story of the coin that was lost and found, and still he looked at her with faint eagerness, as if trying to guess why she should call that his mother's favorite chapter. Then she read slowly, and with sincere emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale of the prodigal son and his hunger, and his good resolution, and his tattered return, and the old father's joy. And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed could not hide his tears.

"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he asked.

"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively. "And you'll notice that this prodigal son didn't wait to make himself better, or even until he could get a new suit of clothes."

The sick man said nothing.

The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at that moment and said:

"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."

"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient, anxiously.

"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.

Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks, was standing timidly at the outside door. Patty took the jelly from her hand and sent a note to the Doctor:

"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in the safest place in the world--doing my duty."

And when the doctor read it he said, in his nervously abrupt fashion: "Perfect angel!"

_CHAPTER XXIX._

PATTY'S JOURNEY.

Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when the heart is cheered, and as Patty, after spending Saturday and Sunday with the patient, found time to come in and give him his breakfast every morning before she went to school, he grew more and more cheerful, and the doctor announced in his sudden style that he'd "get along." In all her interviews Patty was not only a woman but a Methodist. She read the Bible and talked to the man about repentance; and she would not have been a Methodist of that day had she neglected to pray with him. She could not penetrate his reserve. She could not guess whether what she said had any influence on him or not. Once she was startled and lost faith in any good result of her labors when she happened, in arranging things about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap and some heavy false-whiskers. She had more than suspected all along that her patient was a highwayman, but upon seeing the very disguises in which his crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable of theft--perhaps of murder--could ever be any better. She found herself, after that, trying to imagine how the wounded man would look in so fierce a mask. But she soon remembered all that she had learned of the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit working in the worst of sinners, and she got her testament and read aloud to the highwayman the story of the crucified thief.

It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him take his breakfast--he was sitting propped up in bed--that he startled her most effectually. Lifting his eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare that comes of feebleness, he asked:

"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit rider named Goodwin?"

Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret. She turned away to hide her face, and said:

"I used to go to school with him when we were children."

"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said the patient, "that made me tremble all over. He's a great preacher. I wish I was as good as he is."

Patty made some remark about his having been a good boy.

"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used to hear that he had been a little hard--swore and drank and gambled, to say nothing of dancing and betting on horses. But they said some girl jilted him in that day. I suppose he got into bad habits because she jilted him, or else she jilted him because he was bad. Do you know anything about it?"

"Yes."

"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"

Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it. She was going to defend herself--he must know that she was the person--but how? Then she remembered that he was only repeating what had been a matter of common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness led her to answer:

"She acted badly--turned him off because he became a Methodist."

"But there was trouble before that, I thought. When he gambled away his coat and hat one night."

"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty, casting about in her own mind how she might change the conversation.

"Is she alive yet?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet," said the man.

Patty now plead that she must hasten to school. She omitted reading the Bible and prayer with the patient for that morning. It was just as well. There are states of mind not favorable to any but the most private devotions.

On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the cabin a moment, but on coming near she saw horses tied in front of it, and her heart failed her. She reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the gang and she could not bring herself to plunge into their midst in the dusk of the evening. But on Saturday morning she found the strangers not yet gone, and heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey." "Too soft! too soft! altogether," said one. "We ought to have shipped him----" Here the conversation was broken off.

The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she found very uneasy. He was glad to see her, and told her she must stay by him. He seemed anxious for the men to go away, which at last they did. Then he listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became sufficiently uproarious to warrant him in talking.

"I want you to save a man's life."

"Whose?"

"Preacher Goodwin's."

Patty turned pale. She had not the heart to ask a question.

"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll tell you all about it."

Patty promised.

"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat Woods on Sunday afternoon. He preaches in Jenkinsville at eleven, and at Salt Fork at three. Between the two he will be killed. You must go yourself. They'll never suspect you of such a ride. If any man goes out of this settlement, and there's a warning given, he'll be shot. You must go through the woods to-night. If you go in the daytime, you and I will both be killed, maybe. Will you do it?"

Patty had her full share of timidity. But in a moment she saw a vision of Morton Goodwin slain.

"I will go."

"You must not tell the doctor a word about where you're going; you must not tell Goodwin how you got the information."

"He may not believe me."

"Anybody would believe you."

"But he will think that I have been deceived, and he cannot bear to look like a coward."

"That's true," said Pinkey. "Give me a piece of paper. I will write a word that will convince him."

He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word and folded it. "I can trust you; you must not open this paper," he said.

"I will not," said Patty.

"And now you must leave and not come back here until Monday or Tuesday. Do not leave the settlement until five o'clock. Barkins will watch you when you leave here. Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion. Take the east road when you start, and then if anybody is watching they will think that you are going to the lower settlement. Turn round at Wright's corner. It will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom, but there is only one trail through the woods. You must ride through to-night or you cannot reach Jenkinsville to-morrow. God will help you, I suppose, if He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than half believe."

Patty went away bewildered. The journey did not seem so dreadful as the long waiting. She had to appear unconcerned to the people with whom she boarded. Toward evening she told them she was going away until Monday, and at five o'clock she was at the doctor's door, trembling lest some mishap should prevent her getting a horse.

"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated face sharply. "I didn't find you at Barkins's as I expected when I got there this morning. Sick man did not say much. Anything wrong? What scared you away?"

"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."

"You shall have anything you ask."

"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and ask me no questions and make no objections."

"I will trust you."

"I must have a horse at once for a journey."

"This evening?"

"This evening."

"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to go away so late, unless it is a matter of life and death----"

"It is a matter of life and death."

"And you can't trust me?"

"It is not my secret. I promised not to tell you."

"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask questions. Are you certain you are not deceived? Mayn't there be some plot? Mayn't I go with you? Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in saving the life of the person you speak of?"

Patty looked a little startled. "I may be deceived, but I feel so sure that I ought to go that I will try to go on foot, if I cannot get a horse."

"Patty, I don't like this. But I can only trust your judgment. You ought not to have been bound not to tell me."

"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go. It is a matter of life and death to another that it shall not be known that I went. It is a matter of life and death to you and me both that you shall not go with me."

"Is the life you are going to save worth risking your own for? Is it only the life of a robber?"

"It is a life worth more than mine. Ask me no more questions, but have Bob saddled for me." Patty spoke as one not to be refused.

The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted, half eagerly and half timidly.

"When will you come back?"

"In time for school, Monday."

"Patty, think again before you start," called the doctor.

"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode away.

"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered to himself half a hundred times in the next forty-eight hours.

When she had ridden a mile on the road that led to the "lower settlement" she turned an acute angle, and came back on the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, if I may speak so geometrically. She thus went more than two miles to strike the main trail toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from her starting-place. She reached the woods in Long Bottom just as Pinkey told her she would, at dark. She was appalled at the thought of riding sixteen miles through a dense forest of beech trees in the night over a bridle-path. She reined up her horse, folded her hands, and offered a fervent prayer for courage and help, and then rode into the blackness ahead.

There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very valley in Ohio in regard to this dark ride of Patty's. I know it will be thought incredible, but in that day marvelous things were not yet out of date. This legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood of the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved herself for her lonely and perilous ride by prayer, there came to her, out of the darkness of the forest, two beautiful dogs. One of them started ahead of her horse and one of them became her rear-guard. Protected and comforted by her dumb companions, Patty rode all those lonesome hours in that wilderness bridle-path. She came, at midnight, to a settler's house on the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found lodging. The dogs lay in the yard. In the early morning the settler's wife came out and spoke to them but they gave her no recognition at all. Patty came a few moments later, when they arose and greeted her with all the eloquence of dumb friends, and then, having seen her safely through the woods and through the night, the two beautiful dogs, wagging a friendly farewell, plunged again into the forest and went--no man knows whither.

Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to me well avouched. Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all away and show how there was only one dog, and that he was not beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail. Or that the whole thing is but a "solar myth." The middle-ages have not a more pleasant story than this of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy a brave lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest. At any rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians were answers to her prayer. She bade them good-by as they disappeared in the mystery whence they came, and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's favor to her enterprise. Sometimes her heart was sorely troubled at the thought of Morton's being already the husband of another, and all that Sunday morning she took lessons in that hardest part of Christian living--the uttering of the little petition which gives all the inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the accomplishment of His will.

She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven. Meeting had already begun. She knew the Methodist church by its general air of square ugliness, and near it she hitched old Bob.

When she entered the church Morton was preaching. Her long sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise, and she sat upon the back seat listening to the voice whose music was once all her own. Morton was preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions to his own trials when he became a Christian which deeply touched the audience, but which moved none so much as Patty.

The congregation was dismissed but the members remained to "class," which was always led by the preacher when he was present. Most of the members sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had gone Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a large space between her and the rest. Morton asked each one to speak, exhorting each in turn. At last, when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and thus addressed her:

"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with you to-day? Do you feel that you have an interest in the Savior?"

Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of melancholy Patty spoke. There was that in her superior diction and in her delicacy of expression that won upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the brethren and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord bless our strange sister," and so on. But Morton? From the first word he was thrilled with the familiar sound of the voice. It could not be Patty, for why should Patty be in Jenkinsville? And above all, why should she be in class-meeting? Of her conversion he had not heard. But though it seemed to him impossible that it could be Patty, there was yet a something in voice and manner and choice of words that had almost overcome him; and though he was noted for the freshness of the counsels that he gave in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the sense of having known the speaker, that he could not think of anything to say. He fell hopelessly into that trite exhortation with which the old leaders were wont to cover their inanity.

"Sister," he said, "you know the way--walk in it."

Then the brethren and sisters sang:

"O brethren will you meet me
On Canaan's happy shore?"

And the meeting was dismissed.

The members thought themselves bound to speak to the strange sister. She evaded their kindly questions as they each shook hands with her, only answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin. The preacher was eager and curious to converse with her, but one of the old brethren had button-holed him to complain that Brother Hawkins had 'tended a barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession. When the old brother had finished his complaint and had left the church, Morton was glad to see the strange sister lingering at the door. He offered his hand and said:

"A stranger here, I suppose?"

"Not quite a stranger, Morton."

"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed

Patty for her part was pleased and silent.

"Are you a Methodist then?"

"I am."

"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said, greatly agitated.

"To save your life. I am glad I can make you some amend for the way I treated you the last time I saw you."

"To save my life! How?"

"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this afternoon you will be killed on the way."

"How do you know?"

"You must not ask any questions. I cannot tell you anything more."

"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody who wanted to scare me."

Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of paper which Pinkey had given her. She handed it to Morton, saying:

"I don't know what is in this, but the person who sent the message said that you would understand."

Morton opened the paper and started. "Where is he?" he asked.

"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling faintly.

"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to tell me?"

"Not at all. When I joined the church Father pulled the latch-string in. I am teaching school at Hickory Ridge."

"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner." Morton led her horse to the house of one of the members, introduced her as an old schoolmate, who had brought him an important warning, and asked that she receive some dinner.

He then asked Patty to let him go back with her or send an escort, both of which she firmly refused. He left the house and in a minute sat on his Dolly before the gate. At sight of Dolly Patty could have wept. He called her to the gate.

"If you won't let me go with you I must go to Salt Fork. These men must understand that I am not afraid. I shall ride ten miles farther round and they will never know how I did it. Dolly can do it, though. How shall I thank you for risking your life for me? Patty, if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll die for you. I would rather die for you than not."

"Thank you, Morton. You are married, I hear."

"Not married, but I am to be married." He spoke half bitterly, but Patty was too busy suppressing her own emotion to observe his tone.

"I hope you'll be happy." She had determined to say so much.

"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till I die. I am marrying one I never chose. I am utterly miserable. Why didn't you leave me to be waylaid and killed? My life isn't worth the saving. But God bless you, Patty."

So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and was soon gone away around the Wolf Creek road--a long hard ride, with no dinner, and a sermon to preach at three o'clock.

And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in Jenkinsville, her hostess entertained her with accounts of Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, whom Brother Goodwin was to marry. She heard how eloquent was Sister Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and what a model preacher's wife she would be. But the good sister added slyly that she didn't more than half believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at all. He'd tried his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do it.

When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon she did her best, as a good Christian, to feel sorry that Morton could not love the one he was to marry. In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in her heart she was a woman.

_CHAPTER XXX._

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.

When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not difficult to forecast his fate. Everybody saw that he was going into a consumption. One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to live, but not longer. Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself. He rejoiced in it. He was one of those rare spirits to whom the invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious duty is a voice never neglected. That he had sacrificed his own life to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets except that he had not been more zealous. What was life if he could save even one soul?

"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike. If you had taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."

"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live long enough to save many others. When God puts a soul before me I save that one if il costs my life. When I am gone God will find others. It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful. What if by some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell? O! Morton, I am oppressed with responsibility! I will be glad when God shall say, It is enough."

Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike. He was but fulfilling the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not quite emulate him. Read the minutes of the old conferences and you will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing. Men were nothing--the work was everything. Methodism let the dead bury their dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave of one of its own heroes.

But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months' work. Two of this he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away. The other one had gone for quinine. Now he had no clothes that would long hold together. He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers. He could come back in three days. Two days more would suffice to reach Peterborough circuit. So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee. But he did not get back to camp-meeting. An attack of fever held him at home for several weeks.

At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from home. His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to return to his home it would only be to die. And as this was, perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him of her intention to marry Brady. While Brady thought to do the handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending, whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage. It was quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however. But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her heart failed her. He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of making him understand her feelings. Once she began by alluding to her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust in the Lord he would be with her. What was she to do? How make a rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals? And that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?

The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.

"Oh, I can't bear to," said she. "I won't never see him any more and I might hurt him, and----"

"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."

"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.

"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden. If I do it, it'll same jist loike axin' the b'y's consint to marry his mother."

"But I can't noways do it," said the widow. "If you love me you might take that load offen me."

"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady marched into the sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair. Brady took a seat opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and reached up his iron gray hair uneasily. To his surprise Kike began the conversation.

"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very wisely, I think," said Kike.

"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.

"To be sure I have."

"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'. Ye're pecooliar loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize with other folks because ye're livin' roight up in hiven all the toime."

"Why don't you live more in heaven?"

"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help me," said Brady, adroitly. "But I'm one of the koind that's lonesome, and in doire nade of company. I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd niver be a fool agin. But ye see ye ain't niver been in love in all yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"

"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a strange softness coming into his voice.

"Did ye iver! Who'd a thought it?" And Brady made large eyes at him. "Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others," he added with some exultation.

"I do. That's why I said you and mother were very foolish."

"Fwy, now; there it is agin. Fwat do ye mane?"

"Why this. When I was here before I saw that you and mother had taken a liking to each other. I thought by this time you'd have been married. And I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't. But you're as far away as ever. Here's mother's land that needs somebody to take care of it. I am going away never to come back. If I could see you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."

"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes. "Fwy didn't you say that before? Ye're a prophet and a angel, I belave. I wish I was half as good, or a quarther. God bliss ye, me boy. I wish--I wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and your mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to spake to ye about this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased. Now, will ye marry us before ye go?"

"I haven't got any license."

"Here 'tis, in me pocket."

"Where's a witness or two?"

"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other room."

"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike. "I must get away in an hour."

And he married them. They wept over him, and he made no concealment that he was going away for the last time. He rode out from Hissawachee never to come back. Not sad, but exultant, that he had sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life everlasting. For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and children.

_CHAPTER XXXI._

KIKE.

To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through Morton's great diocese of Jenkinsville Circuit. He could not ride far. Even so intemperate a zealot as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his calculations. He must save his strength in journeying or he could not reach his circuit, much less preach when he got there. At the close of his second day he inquired for a Methodist house at which to stop, and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located" preacher--one who had been a "travelling" preacher, but, having married, was under the necessity of entangling himself with the things of this world that he might get bread for his children. As he rode up to the house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in progress. He was in Morton's circuit; who could tell that he should not meet him here?

When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the door between the two rooms preaching, with the back of a "split-bottomed" chair for a pulpit. For a moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten with death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton never spoke better on that favorite theme of the early Methodist evangelist--the rest in heaven--than while drawing his inspiration from the pallid countenance of his comrade.

"Ah! Kike!" he said, when the meeting was dismissed, "I wish you had my body."

"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for, Mort? Let God have his way," said Kike, smiling contentedly.

But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay awake. He could not let the poor fellow go off alone. So in the morning he arranged with the located brother to take his appointments for awhile and let him ride one day with Kike.

"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the ex-preacher. "The corn's laid by and I've got nothing to do, and I'm spoiling for a preach."

Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of Hickory Ridge, and Morton, persuaded that Kike was unfit to preach, endeavored to induce him to turn aside and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his road.

"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength left. I cannot spend it better than in trying to save souls. There's Peterborough vacant three months since Brother Jones was first taken sick. I want to make one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the heart I have. Then I'll cease at once to work and live, and who knows but that I may slay more in my death than in my life?"

But Morton feared that he would not be able to make one round. He thought he had an overestimate of his strength, and that the final break-down might come at any moment. So, on the morning of the second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to return. He would see him safe among the members on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.

Now it happened that they missed the trail and wandered far out of their way. It rained all the afternoon, and Kike got drenched in crossing a stream. Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter. He stopped at a cabin.

"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler, as soon as he saw them. "I 'low ye're preachers. Brother Goodwin I know. Heerd him down at camp-meetin' last fall,--time conference met on the Ridge. And this brother looks mis'rable. Got the shakes, I 'low? Your name, brother, is--"

"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.

"Lumsden? Wy, that air's the very name of our school-miss, and she's stayin' here jes' now. I kinder recolleck that you was sick up at Dr. Morgan's, conference time. Hey?"

Morton looked bewildered.

"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"

"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low. Ain't it, Sister Lumsden?" This last to Patty, who at that moment appeared from the bedroom, and without answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike with a cry of joy. Patty was "boarding round," and it was her time to stay here.

"How did we get here? We aimed at Lanham's Ferry," said Morton, bewildered.

"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low. You should've gone by Hanks's Mills."

Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother, Morton was determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's. Kike was just sick enough to be passive, and he suffered himself to be put back into the saddle to ride to the doctor's. Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields and gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed away in the bed he had occupied before. Thus do men try to run away from fate, and rush into her arms in spite of themselves.

It did not require very great medical skill to understand what must be the result of Kike's sickness.

"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked Morton, next morning.

"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the physician, in his abrupt manner. "There's not water enough left in the branch to run the mill seven days. Wasted life, sir, wasted life. It is a pity but you Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."

Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every minute that he might see Nettie come in. But she did not come. He had wished to avoid her father's house for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to be thus near her and not see her. Toward evening he called Patty to him.

"Lean down here!" he said.

Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.

"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.

"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.

"Why don't she come in to see me?"

"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty; "she seems to be crying half the time."

Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening. But Nettie did not come. To have come into Kike's room would have been to have revealed her love for one who had never declared his love for her. The mobile face of Nettie disclosed every emotion. No wonder she was fain to keep away. And yet the desire to see him almost overcame her fear of seeing him.

When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast the next morning, the patient looked at him wistfully.

"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth. Will I ever get up?"

"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the physician, huskily.

A smile of relief spread over Kike's face. At that word the awful burden of his morbid sense of responsibility for the world's salvation, the awful burden of a self-sacrifice that was terrible and that must be life-long, slipped from his weary soul. There was then nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's release. He shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!" and lay for minutes, motionless. As the doctor made a movement to leave him, Kike opened his eyes and looked at him eagerly.

"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the straight black hair off Kike's forehead, and petting him as though he were a child. "What do you want?"

"Doctor----" said Kike, and then closed his eyes again.

"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart, dear boy." The tears were in the doctor's eyes.

"If you think it best--if you think it best, mind--I would like to see Nettie."

"Of course it is best. I am glad you mentioned it. It will do her good, poor soul."

"If you think it best----"

"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated. "Speak out."

"All alone."

"Yes, you shall see her alone. That is best." The doctor's utterance was choked as he hastened out.

Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door. It seemed a long time after the doctor went before Nettie came in. It was only three minutes--three minutes in which Nettie vainly strove to wipe away tears that flowed faster than she could remove them. At last her hand was on the latch. She gained a momentary self-control. But when she opened the door and saw his emaciated face, and his black eyes looking so eagerly for her, it was too much for the poor little heart. The next moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing violently. And Kike put out his feeble hands and drew the golden head up close to his bosom, and spoke tenderer words than he had ever heard spoken in his life. And then he closed his eyes, and for a long time nothing was said. It came about after Nettie's tears were spent that they talked of all that they had felt; of the life past and of the immortal life to come. Hours went by and none intruded upon this betrothal for eternity. Patty had waited without, expecting to be called to take her place again by her cousin's bedside. But she did not like to remain in conversation with Morton. It could bring nothing but pain to them both. It occurred to her that she had not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike came. She started immediately, glad to escape from the regrets excited by the presence of Morton, and touched with remorse that she had so long neglected a man on whose heart she thought she had been able to make some religious impression.

_CHAPTER XXXII._

PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.

Pinkey was grum. He didn't like to be neglected, if he was a highwayman. He had gotten out of bed and drawn on his boots.

"So you couldn't come to see me because there was a young preacher sick at the doctor's?" he said, when Patty entered.

"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty, "and he is going to die."

"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little. "But Goodwin is there, too. I hope you didn't tell him anything about me?"

"Not a word."

"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."

"He seems to be."

"And people that are grateful are very likely to have other feelings after awhile." There was a significance in Pinkey's manner that Patty greatly disliked.

"You should not talk in that way. Mr. Goodwin is engaged to be married."

"Is he? Do you mind telling me her name?"

"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."