Читать книгу: «The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage», страница 14

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HEGIRA

CALLISTA roused that morning, to see Lance moving, light-footed, a shadow between her and the first struggling blaze of the fire he had kindled. With sleepy surprise she noted his activities. When she observed that he was packing her canned fruit, with quick, deft fingers, she inquired,

"What you doin' there. Lance? No use fixin' them up now. Sylvane won't be here till in the morning."

Lance broke off the low whistling which had wakened her, and turned to regard his wife for a moment before he spoke.

"I thought I'd get this packing done," he said non-committally. "If we was to go home to-day I could tote whatever we needed, and Buddy could fetch over the heaviest stuff to-morrow."

Callista dozed a little luxuriously, and woke to a smell of boiling coffee and frying pork.

"You've got breakfast enough there for three people," she commented, when she finally drew near the fire.

"Uh-huh," assented Lance. "I 'lowed Sylvane might come to-day, place of Saturday. Anyhow, we'll need something for a bite on the way." And Callista realized that her husband was indeed making the final preparations for their return.

As they sat down either side the frying pan, and Callista lifted the lid from the Dutch oven to take the bread out, they became aware of the sound of scrambling hoofs and parting branches. Whenever there was high water in Caney, this little valley was cut off, it was a retreat unknown, unvisited; the newcomer could be nobody but Sylvane. A moment later the boy made his appearance, clambering over the rocks, leading Satan by a long line.

"I 'lowed you-all wouldn't mind coming back a day sooner," he apologized, as he gratefully seated himself for an addition to his hastily snatched breakfast eaten by candle-light. "They's a feller that the Company has sent up to look over lands, and he's a-buyin' mineral rights – or ruther, gettin' options – on everybody's farms. They'll pay big prices, and Sis' Roxy said I ought to come and tell Lance of it."

The man listened indifferently, but the woman was all aglow. The touch of practical life had dissolved whatever of the gipsy mood Lance's nature had been able to lend hers. She questioned the boy minutely. Lance listening with ill-concealed impatience; and when the subject was exhausted, began to ask him with great particularity concerning her truck patch at home and whether Spotty, the young cow Lance had traded with Squire Ashe for, was doing well in her milk.

In spite of Lance's packing, there was much to do before camp could be struck, and on account of the canned fruit they moved so slowly that noon saw them still in the wilderness, dropping down by the stream's side to eat the snack they had brought with them. They went around by Father Cleaverage's this time, and stopped there, since Callista intended to present a few of her cherished huckleberries to Roxy, and they reached the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel late in the afternoon.

For some reason which he could not himself have told you, Lance felt strangely wearied and dissatisfied. He looked back to the week past, and admitted that all had gone well; days of fishing and dreaming, evenings under the open sky with the banjo humming, the not unwelcome fire leaping up, and the baby asleep on Callista's lap. Could a man have asked more?

The son of the house had thriven amazingly on it, and this evening he was assuming airs so domineering that his father professed fear of him.

"Look a here, young feller," Lance said, as the big eight-months-old came creeping across the floor and hammered on his knee to be taken up, "you're about to run me out o' the house." He lifted his son on his arm, and, carrying the banjo in the other hand, beyond reach of the clutching, fat fingers, went to the doorstone with them. "Oh, you're your mammy over again," he admonished the baby. "You don't own up to me at all. I wisht I had me a nice gal o' your size, that would admit I was her daddy."

Callista had her supper nearly ready. Growing now, with motherhood, intensely material, – or, as Lance had more than once jokingly declared, a trifle grasping, – the selling of the land to the Company for a big price occupied all her thoughts.

"You'll go over to Squire Ashe's soon in the morning, won't you Lance and see about the land?" she questioned. "Sylvane said the man was stayin' at Ashe's."

"I don't know as I want to sell," the owner of Jesse Lance's Gap hundred observed indifferently, running random little chords on his banjo. "I ain't rightly studied about it."

"Well, I wish you would study about it," urged Callista. "I think it's your duty to."

"I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"

hummed Lance to a twanging accompaniment from the strings. "Looks like I've heard them words before somewheres. I'll be blessed if that ain't Sis' Roxy's tune you've took up, Callista!"

"Your sister does her duty in this world," asserted Callista tartly. "It's nothing but the mineral rights, they'll want. All that talk you had this mornin' about the land coming from your gran'pappy, and your not wanting to leave it, is just to – to have your own way."

Lance raised his eyebrows.

"Would you say so?" he debated, his voice quiet, but the spark shining deep in his hazel eye. "Well now, I'd have said – if you'd axed me – that I've had my own way most generally without resorting to such. I'm ruther expectin' to have my own way from this time out, and take no curious methods of gettin' it."

"Well, what are you going to do about selling the land?" she persisted.

Lance lifted the baby's fat hand and pretended to pick the banjo strings with the pointed, inadequate fingers, to the young man's serious enjoyment. Callista waited for what she considered a reasonable time, and then prompted.

"Lance. Lance, did you hear me?"

"Oh, yes, I heared you well enough," Lance told her composedly. "I was just a-studyin' on the matter."

Again silence, punctuated by the aimless twanging of the banjo strings, the little sounds from the summer world without, the quick, light tapping of Callista's feet and the little whisper of her skirts as she moved about her task.

"Well – have you studied?" she inquired abruptly at length.

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance negligently, curling himself down on the doorstone a little further, "an' I'm studyin' yet. Ye see that there feller they sent out for an agent met me on the big road one day about a month ago and bantered me to trade. I told him I'd let him know, time I got back."

"And you never named it to me!" Callista said sharply, pausing, dish in hand by the table side, and staring at her husband with reprehending eyes. "You never said a word to me about it; and you went off on that foolish camping trip! For the good gracious, I don't know what men are made of!"

"Some are made of one thing, and some of another," allowed Lance easily, leaning his head back against the door jamb and half closing his eyes.

"Before we went away," repeated Callista reproachfully. "Maybe you've lost your chance."

The spur to Lance Cleaverage, the goad, was ever the hint to go slower; applied recklessly, it was quite sufficient to make him dig heels and toes into the track and refuse to go at all. At Callista's suggestion that he had missed his chance, he balked entirely.

"Well, I don't know as I want to sell," he reiterated. "That's what I told the man – and that's the truth."

"Of course you want to sell," asserted Callista in exasperation, "and you want to sell terrible bad – we all do. Nobody in the Turkey Tracks has got any money. We just live from hand to mouth, and dig what we get out of the ground mighty hard. Oh, I wish't I was a man. I'd go straight down to the Settlement and sell this land before I came back."

A faint color showed itself in her husband's brown cheeks. His lips parted slightly and remained so for a moment before he spoke.

"Not unless the man you was chanced to be me, you wouldn't sell my land," he said at length, speaking softly, almost dreamily.

Callista's temper was slow, but it was implacable. She eyed her husband for a moment and turned to begin dishing up her supper. Lance lifted his son back once more out of reach of the instrument, set him comfortably against the propped open door, took up the banjo and commenced to play a lively air for the boy's diversion.

"Flenton Hands has sold," Callista flung out the words as she bent over the hearth to a pot that stood there. She had the news from Roxy Griever.

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance indefinitely, and offered no question as to what the lands had brought or whether the deal was actually closed.

"Sylvane said Gran'pappy met him in the big road, and he said that them that didn't sell now, or that just give options, would be sorry afterwards. He thinks the Company's mistaken about the coal being on this side o' the ridge, and that they'll soon find it out and quit buying."

"That so?" laughed Lance. "Well, in that case, I sha'n't make no efforts. I'd hate to get anything off the Company that wasn't coming to me, and I reckon – "

He broke off suddenly. Callista had turned to face him, white, angry as he had never seen her before. Her blue eyes rounded meaningly to the downy poll of the baby sitting on the floor between them. This was how much he cared for the up-bringing and the future of the child.

"Lance Cleaverage," she said in a low, even tone, "a woman that's married to a man, and lived with him for two years, and got his child to raise, ought to quit him for such a speech as that."

This was the ultimate challenge. Here was the gage thrown down. She dared him. He leaned forward to lift back the boy, who was clambering once more for the banjo. Then he straightened up and looked his Callista full in the eye, breathing light and evenly, half smiling, his face strangely luminous.

"All right," he said, and his voice rang keen-edged and vibrant. "If them's your ruthers – walk out. What's a'keepin' you? Shain't be said I ever hendered a woman that wanted to quit me."

Very softly, Callista set down the plate of bread she held. Gazing straight ahead of her, she stood a moment rigid, in a waiting, listening attitude. Out of her mood of cold displeasure, of nagging resentment, flamed, at her husband's words, that sudden fire of relentless rage of which Callista was capable. Her sight cleared, and she became aware of what she was staring at – the wall, with its well-planned shelves of Lance's contriving; the beautifully whittled utensils and small, dainty implements of cedar which he had made for her use. Slowly her glance swept the circle of the room. Evidences of Lance's skill and cleverness were everywhere; proofs that he had persistently tamed both to the service of wife and home. Yet, at this moment, these things made no appeal. Mechanically she inspected her supper table, then turned and moved swiftly across the open passage to the room beyond. Promptly, unerringly, she gathered together a bundle of needments for herself and the child, thrust them in a clean flour sack, and swung it across her arm. Going back, she found her husband still sprawled in the doorway, his side face held to the darkening interior of the room behind him. Banjo on knee, he leaned against the lintel, whistling beneath his breath, his eyes on the far primrose band of light dying down in the west.

Callista gave no further glance at the home which had been much to her. She averted her gaze stonily from the husband who had once been all. Bending, with a single motion she swept the baby up in her arm, raised him to her shoulder and stepped to the open doorway. Lance never turned his head or seemed to note her. He made room for her passage without appearing to move a muscle. Out she went and down to the gate – a real gate, that swung true and did not drag; Lance's planning and handiwork. She unlatched it, passed through, and drew it shut behind her, never looking back.

And with scarcely a change of attitude and expression, except that his fingers twitched a bit and the smile on his lean, brown, young face became set and unnatural, he watched her evenly swaying figure pass on down the road. Head defiantly erect, eyes strangely bright. Lance stared meaninglessly, like a man shot through but not yet crumpling to his fall. The baby fluttered a fat, white, little starfish of a hand over his mother's shoulder and called "Bye-by," the sum of all his attainments in the matter of language.

The man did not look up. His head was bent now, his gaze had forsaken the slender new moon swinging like a boat in the greenish haze of the western sky, where some smoldering coals of sunset yet sent up gray twilight smoke.

Callista vanished between the trees. It was dusk, and deeply still. Down in the alders, beside the spring branch, the whippoorwills were calling. In the intervals of their far, plaintive importunity, the silence was punctuated lightly by the tiny, summer-evening chirpings in the grass.

The moon sank lower, the sunset coals burned into swart cinders; the hosts of the dark marched in upon the still figure on the doorstone where Lance crouched motionless, his face drooped almost to the threshold, his arms flung forward till they touched the nodding weeds by the path. So an hour counted itself out, and there was no change in his posture, no lifting of the head. The little moon finally dropped down behind the hills; dew lay thick on the curls beside the great limestone slab. About ten o'clock a cloud blew in through the Gap, bearing a tiny shower of summer rain. Under the cool pattering that drenched his hair and garments. Lance stirred not at all; but all the noises of the July night were hushed by it, and in the chill which followed, he shivered. Deep in the night's silent heart, a bird cried out; Lance started and raised his face to the darkness with a sort of groan.

"And this time she won't come back," he whispered.

CHAPTER XIX.
CALLISTA CLEAVERAGE GOES HOME

CALLISTA reached her grandfather's gate when the old man was just finishing that last pipe he loved to smoke in his big hickory arm chair on the porch before he lay down for his night's rest. In the soft, summer night, beginning to be thick with stars, he was aware that whoever the newcomer was, it was someone well known to the dogs, for the chorus of greetings was distinctly friendly. Yet his keen old hunter's ears noticed the surprised yap of a younger hound born since Callista left the farm; and when his granddaughter emerged into the light of the doorway, he was scarcely surprised.

"Good evenin', Gran'pappy. Where's Mother?" Callista greeted him.

Before Ajax could answer her, his daughter-in-law came hurrying out crying,

"Lord love yo' soul, honey! Did you git home at last to see yo' mammy that's – "

Callista silenced her with a raised hand.

"W'y, Callisty honey," ejaculated Mrs. Gentry, examining her anxiously, "is anything the matter with Lance?"

A slight contraction passed across the visitor's face, as they watched it, but she answered coldly, evenly,

"I reckon there's nothing more the matter of Lance Cleaverage than there always has been. I've come home."

Dead silence followed this statement. Then old Ajax knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly put it in his pocket.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, "you've come home – and I always knowed you would."

Octavia turned on him crying in a voice more tremulous with tears than anger,

"Now, Pap Gentry – "

But Callista interposed, with the faintest flicker of her old fire,

"Let him have his say. I told you-all once, standin' right here on this porch, that I'd never come home to this house with empty hands – that I'd bring something. Well, I have. I've brought this child."

Octavia was striving to take the baby from his mother's arms, to draw Callista into the house. At this she began to cry,

"Make her hush, Pap Gentry," she pleaded. "Don't set there and let my gal talk that-a-way!"

But old Ajax, remembering the turbulent days of his youth, knowing from his own wild heart in those long past days the anger that burned in Callista, and must have way, wisely offered no interference.

"I've come home to stay," Callista pursued bitterly, "and I've brought my boy. But ye needn't be afraid of seein' us come. Sence I lived here I've learned how to work. I can earn my way, and his, too."

"Callista," sobbed the mother, clinging to her daughter, still seeking to draw her forward, "you're welcome here; and, if anything, the boy is welcomer. We ain't got nobody but you. Pappy, make her welcome; tell her that we're proud to have her as long as she's willin' to stay, and – and – " she hesitated desperately – "we'd be proud to have Lance, too."

She instantly saw her mistake. Callista drew herself sharply from her mother's detaining arms and sat down on the porch edge, hushing the child whom their talk had disturbed. Presently she said – and her voice sounded low, and cold, and clear,

"I have quit Lance Cleaverage. You needn't name his being anywhere that I'm at."

Gentry snorted, and heaved himself up in his chair as though to go into the house.

"I consider that I had good cause to quit him," Callista went on; "but I'm not a-goin' to – "

"I don't want to know yo' reasons!" broke in old Ajax fiercely. "I say, reason! Reason and you ort not to be named in the same day. Yo' mammy spiled you rotten – I told her so, a-many's the time – and now them that wishes you well has to look on and see you hit out and smash things."

The deep, rumbling old voice sank and quavered toward the end.

"I wasn't going to give you any reasons," returned Callista contemptuously. "Them that I've got are betwixt me and Lance – and there they'll always be. I would rather live at home; but I can earn my keep and the chap's anywhere. Shall I go – or stay?"

The old man put down a shaking hand and laid it on her shoulder – a tremendous demonstration for Ajax Gentry.

"You'll stay, gal," he said in a broken tone. "You'll stay, and welcome. But I want you to know right here and now that I think Lance Cleaverage is a mighty fine man. You' my gran'child – my onliest one – I set some considerable store by ye myse'f. But there's nothing you've said or done that gives me cause to change my mind about Lance."

Callista rose, still hushing her boy in her arms.

"If I'm to live with you-all," she said in a tone of authority which had never been hers in the days of her petted, spoiled girlhood, "I may as well speak out plain and say that I never want to hear the name of Cleaverage if I can help it. If you don't agree to that – without any why or wherefore – I'd rather not stay."

"Oh, honey – oh, honey!" protested Octavia tearfully. "Gran'pappy and me will do just whatever you say. Fetch the baby in the house. God love his little soul, hit's the first time he's ever been inside of these doors – and to think he should come this-a-way!"

Callista drew back and eyed her mother.

"If you're going to go on like that," she said, "I reckon it would be just as well for me to live somewheres else. You won't see me shed a tear. I don't know what there is to cry for. Gran'pappy is an old man – he ought to have some peace about him. I won't come in unless you hush."

And having laid her will upon them both, Callista Cleaverage re-entered the dwelling of her girlhood and disposed her sleeping boy on the bed in the fore room.

To the mind of man, which looks always to find noise and displacement commensurate with size, there is something appalling about the way in which the great events of life slip smoothly into position, fitting themselves between our days with such nicety as to seem always to have been there. Little calamities jar and fret and refuse to be adjusted, but matters of life and death and eternity flow as smoothly as water.

Callista might have dropped easily into her old place in the home, but the woman who had returned to the Gentry roof could never have contented herself in that narrow sphere. Strong, efficient, driven to tireless activity by memories which one might guess stung and hurt the mind at leisure, she cleared out the long unused weaving room and set the loom to work.

"Aunt Faithful Bushares learned me to weave whilst I was stayin' at Miz. Griever's, after the baby was born," she told her mother. "I'll finish this rag carpet you've got in the loom, and then I'll be able to earn some ready money. I can weave mighty pretty carpet, and a body can get a plenty of it to do from down in the Settlement. They's things I need from the store now and agin, and this boy's got to have something laid by for him, to take care of him as he grows."

Thus boldly, at the outset – though without mentioning the forbidden name – she made it known to them that she would accept nothing from her husband. Octavia Gentry was always on the edge of tears when she talked to Callista about her plans; at other times, the daughter's presence in the house was cheerful and sustaining. If Callista brooded on the shipwreck of her affairs, she asked no sympathy from anyone. Indeed, so far from seeking it, she resented bitterly any suggestion of the sort.

Lance's own family blamed him more than did Callista's people. Roxy Griever, of course, was loud in her denunciations.

"Hit's jest the trick a body might expect from one of tham men," she commented. "He never was fitten for Callisty; and when a feller plumb outmarries hisself, looks like hit makes a fool of him, and he cain't noways behave."

Old Kimbro gazed upon the floor.

"I reckon it's my fault, Roxana," he said gently. "Lance has a strong nature, and he needed better discipline than what I was able to give him. I had my hopes that he'd get it in his marriage, for daughter Callista is sure a fine woman; but – well, maybe time'll mend it. I don't give up all hope yet."

"Miz. Gentry sent word that she wanted me to help them through fodder-pullin'," Sylvane announced. "If I do, I'm a-goin' to watch my chance to talk to Sis' Callie. She's always the sweetest thing to me. I'll bet I can get in a good word for Buddy."

But it was Roxy Griever who saw Callista before Sylvane did. Octavia, desperately anxious and perturbed, sent word to the widow to drop in as though by accident and spend the day. Callista came into the room without knowing who was present. The two women were fluttering about over her baby, exclaiming and admiring. The young mother greeted the visitor with an ordinary manner, which yet was a trifle cold.

"The boy's mighty peart," the Widow Griever said eagerly. "But," examining Callista with a somewhat timid eye, "you' lookin' a little puny yo'self. Sis' Callie."

"Oh, I'm perfectly well," returned Callista sharply.

There fell a silence, upon which Roxy's voice broke, husky and uncertain.

"Well, I hope you won't harbor no hard feelin's toward any of Lance's kin-folks, for we don't none of us uphold him."

At the name a quiver went through Callista's frame, the blue eyes fixed on Roxy's face flickered a bit in their steady, almost fierce regard. Then she bent and picked up her child.

"I reckon Mother hasn't said anything to you," she explained evenly; "but I have asked each and every in this house not to say – You spoke a name that I won't hear from anybody if I can help it. If you and me are to sit down at the same table, you'll have to promise not to mention that – that person again."

Then she walked out, leaving the two older women staring at each other, aghast, both of them with tears in their eyes.

"But I cain't blame her," Roxana hastened to declare. "I know in my soul that everything that's chanced is Lance's fault. He always was the meanest little boy, and the worst big boy, and the sinfulest young man, that ever a God-fearin' father had! He never was half way fitten for Callista – and I always said so."

"Oh, Miz. Griever – hush!" protested Octavia. "She'll hear you – Sis' ain't but gone in the next room."

"Well, I hope she may," the widow pursued piously, in a slightly raised tone. "I'd hate mightily to have my sweet Sis' Callie think that I held with any sech; or that I didn't know what her troubles had been, or didn't feel that she was plumb jestified and adzactly right in all points and in all ways whatever."

"M – maybe she is," sniffed soft-hearted Octavia; "but I love Lance mighty well. Right now I could jest break down and bawl when I think o' him there in the cabin all alone by himself, and – "

The closing words were lost in the apron she raised to her eyes. If Callista heard the controversy, it had an odd effect; for she treated the Widow Griever with considerable resentment, and, laying a gentle hand on her mother's shoulder, said to her apart:

"I don't want to be a torment to you, Mammy; but I believe when any of those folks are about I'd better just take the baby and stay in my own house."

"But, honey," her mother remonstrated, "Pappy Gentry's aimin' to have Sylvanus here all through fodder-pullin' time. Is that a-goin' to trouble you? Do you just despise all them that's kin to – would you ruther we didn't have the boy?"

Callista shook her head.

"It ain't for me to say," she repeated stubbornly Then, with a sudden rush of tears in her hard eyes, "I do love Sylvane. I always did. I couldn't have an own brother I'd think more of. But – well, let him come over here if you want him. I can keep out of his way."

The "house" to which Callista proposed to retire was the outside cabin, where the loom stood. This she had fitted up for the use of herself and child, as well as a weaving room, saying that the noise might disturb Gran'pappy if the baby were in the house all the time. And it was at the threshold of that outside cabin that, only a few days later, Sylvane caught his sister-in-law and detained her, the baby on her arm. Little Ajax reared himself in his mother's hold and plunged at his youthful uncle, so that she had no choice but to turn and speak.

"How you come on, Sis' Callie?" Sylvane inquired, after he had tossed the heavy boy up a time or two and finally set him on his shoulder.

"Tol'able," Callista returned briefly. "I've got a lot of weavin' to do and it keeps me in the house pretty steady."

"I – was you leavin' in thar becaze I come?" inquired Sylvane with a boy's directness.

Callista shook her head.

"Didn't I tell you I was mighty busy?" she asked evasively. "You an' me always have been good friends, Sylvane, and I aim that we always shall be, if it lies in my power."

The young fellow looked up at her where she stood above him in the doorway.

"You ain't never a-goin' to fuss with me," he told her bluntly. "Besides, me and this chap is so petted on each other that you couldn't keep us apart," and he turned to root a laughing face into the baby's side, greatly to that serious-minded young man's enjoyment.

Callista smiled down at both of them, and Sylvane found something wintry and desolate in the smile.

"Weavin' is mighty hard work," he broke out impatiently. "Even Sis' Roxy says that, and the Lord knows she's ready to kill herself and everybody else around her with workin'. What makes you do so much of it, Sis' Callie?"

Callista looked past the two and answered:

"Sylvane, a woman with a child to support has to work hard here in the Turkey Tracks. If it wasn't for Mommie and Gran'pappy I'd go down in the Settlement, where I could earn more and earn it easier."

"Callista – honey," Sylvane bent forward and caught her arm. "You ain't got no call to talk that-a-way. Lance shore has a right to support his own son – even if you won't take nothin' from him for yo'self."

Callista removed her gaze from the far sky line and brought it down to her young brother-in-law. Now indeed her smile was wintry, even bitter.

"The man you named, Sylvane," she said explicitly, "has no notion of carin' what becomes of this child. Now that you've brought this up, I'll say to you what I haven't said to any other: it was this that caused me to quit Lance. You' right, I did leave the house in there for fear you should speak to me – and speak of him. If I could be sure that I'd never hear his name again, I'd be better suited. I reckon you'll have to promise not to bring this up again, or they'll sure get to be hard feelings between you and me."

Sylvane dropped back with a face of consternation, his hand fell away from her arm. He reached up and drew the boy down, so that the small, fair face was against his breast.

"Sis' Callie," he began incredulously, "I cain't believe it. Buddy's got quare ways, but them that loves him can understand. His own son – ! Why, ef the chap was mine – " He broke off, and stood a moment in silence. "The meanest man there is, looks like to me, ort to be glad to do for his own child."

The words were not so strange on the lips of the tall seventeen-year-old boy with the child's eyes, since in mountain communities youths little older are often husbands and fathers.

"Well, air you going to promise me never to name it again?" demanded Callista, an almost querulous edge to her voice. Sylvane's resemblance to his brother, some gnawing knowledge of injustice toward the absent Lance, wrought upon her mood intolerably.

"No, I'll never name Buddy to you again," said Sylvane soberly. "If you and me ever talks of him, you'll have to mention it first. But if there is anything I can do for you, Sis' Callie, you know you have but to ask."

"I know that, Sylvane," Callista assured him, with a certain eagerness in her tone. "And they is something – something that I reckon nobody could do as well as you could. I need – I just have obliged to get my things from – from up yon in the Gap. Would you go fetch 'em for me, Brother?"

Sylvane, after all, was kin to Lance. He could not keep down a little thrill of pride, that his brother had thus far forced Callista's hand. But he answered gravely – almost sadly,

"I'll go this day, if you say so."

Securing permission from Ajax to absent himself, the boy hitched his old mule to the buckboard and hurried off to the home at the head of Lance's Laurel. Whether or not he found all of Callista's belongings packed and ready, what was said between the two men, no one knew. He returned near nightfall with Callista's trunk and one or two sizable bundles, while Spotty meekly led roped to the rear axle of the buckboard. Callista helped him into her cabin with the bundles; but when he would have untied Spotty she remonstrated.