“I hear,” Redfield said sullenly, with
the consent which Braile read in his words. “But
if there’s any more such goings on as we’ve
had here to-night, I won’t answer for the rest
of his scalp.”
He hurried forward from the elderly couple and overtook
the Gillespies walking rapidly. Hughey Blake
had just fallen away from them and stood disconsolately
looking after them.
“Is that you, James Redfield?” David Gillespie
asked, peering at him in the night’s dimness.
“This is the man that helped me to get you a
lock of that scoundrel’s hair,” he said
to his daughter.
She answered nothing in acknowledgment of the introduction,
but Redfield said, coming round to her side and suiting
his step to hers, “I would like to go home with
you till my road passes yours.”
“Well,” she said, “if you ain’t
ashamed to be seen with such a fool. Nobody can
see you to-night,” she added, bitterly, including
him in her self-scorn.
“You needn’t imply that I like it to be
in the dark. I would like to walk with you in
broad day past all the houses in Leatherwood.
But I don’t suppose you’d let me.”
She did not say anything, and he added, “I’m
going to ask you to the first chance.”
Still she did not say anything, though her father
had fallen behind and left the talk wholly to them.
Nancy sat at her door in the warm September evening
when the twilight was beginning to come earlier than
in the August days, and her boy rushed round the corner
of the cabin in a boy’s habitual breathlessness
from running.
“Oh, mother, mother!” he called to her,
as if he were a great way off. “Guess what!”
He did not wait for her to guess. “The Good
Old Man is goin’ to leave Leatherwood and go
Over the Mountains with the Little Flock, and he says
he’s goin’ to bring down the New Jerusalem
at Philadelphy, and all that wants to go up with him
kin go. Mr. Hingston’s goin’ with
him, and he’s goin’ to let Benny.
Benny don’t know whether he can get to go up
in the New Jerusalem or not, but he’s goin’
to coax his father the hardest kind.”
He stopped panting at his mother’s knees where
she sat on the cabin threshold nearly as high as he
stood. She put up her hand and pushed the wet
hair from his forehead. “How you do
sweat, Joey! Go round and wash your face at the
bench. Maybe Jane will give you a drink of the
milk, while it’s warm yet, before she lets it
down in the well. She’s just through milkin’.”
The boy tore himself away with a shout of “Oh,
goody!” and his mother heard him at the well.
“Wait a minute, Jane! Mother said I could
have a drink before you let it down,” and then
she heard him, between gulps, recounting to the girl’s
silence the rumors she had already heard from him.
He came running back, with a white circle of milk round
his lips. “Mother,” he began, “have
you ever been Over-the-Mountains?”
