Hit's jest as well ye didn't hit him,"said the old woman.'Hit air five dollars fine to kill a buzzard around hyeh.I'd never thought that little thing could shoot.""It shoots several times,"said Clayton."Hit does whut?"Like a pistol,"he explained,and,rising,he directed several shots in quick succession at a dead tree in the ploughed field.At each shot a puff of dust came almost from the same spot.
When he turned,Easter had risen to her feet in astonishment,and the mother was laughing long and loudly.
"Don't ye wish ye had a gun like that,Easter?"she cried.
Clayton turned quickly to the girl,and began explaining the mechanism of the gun to her,without appearing to notice her embarrassment,for she shrank perceptibly when he spoke to her.
"Won't you let me see your gun?"he asked.
She brought out the old flint-lock,and handed it to him almost timidly.
This is very interesting,"he said."I never saw one like it before.""Thar hain't but one more jest like that in the mountains,"said the old woman,"'n'Easter's got that.My dad made 'em both.""How would you like to trade one for mine,if you have two?"said Clayton to the girl."I'll give you all my cartridges to boot."The girl looked at her mother with hesitation.Clayton saw that both wondered what he could want with the gun,and he added:
"I'd like to have it to take home with me.It would be a great curiosity.""Well,"said the mother,"you kin hev one ef ye want hit,and think the trade's fa'r."Clayton insisted,and the trade was made.The old woman resumed spinning.The girl took her seat in the low chair,holding her new treasure in her lap,with her eyes fixed on it,and occasionally running one brown hand down its shining barrel.Clayton watched her.She had given no sign whatever that she had ever seen him before,and yet a curious change had come over her.Her imperious manner had yielded to a singular reserve and timidity.The peculiar beauty of the girl struck him now with unusual force.Her profile was remarkably regular and delicate;her mouth small,resolute,and sensitive;heavy,dark lashes shaded her downcast eyes;and her brow suggested a mentality that he felt a strong desire to test.Her feet were small,and so were her quick,nervous hands,which were still finely shaped,in spite of the hard usage that had left them brown and callous.He wondered if she was really as lovely as she seemed;if his standard might not have been affected by his long stay in the mountains;if her picturesque environment might not have influenced his judgment.He tried to imagine her daintily slippered,clad in white,with her loose hair gathered in a Psyche knot;or in evening dress,with arms and throat bare;but the pictures were difficult to make.He liked her best as she was,in perfect physical sympathy with the natural phases about her;as much a part of them as tree,plant,or flower,embodying the freedom,grace,and beauty of nature as well and as unconsciously as they.He questioned whether she hardly felt herself to be apart from them;and,of course,she as little knew her kinship to them.
She had lifted her eyes now,and had fixed them with tender thoughtfulness on the mountains.What did she see in the scene before her,he wondered:the deep valley,brilliant with early sunshine;the magnificent sweep of wooded slopes;Pine Mountain and the peak-like Narrows,where through it the river had worn its patient way;and the Cumberland Range,lying like a cloud against the horizon,and bluer and softer than the sky above it.He longed to know what her thoughts were;if in them there might be a hint of what he hoped to find.Probably she could not tell them,should he ask her,so unconscious was she of her mental life,whatever that might be.Indeed,she seemed scarcely to know of her own existence;there was about her a simplicity to which he had felt himself rise only in the presence of the spirit about some lonely mountain-top or in the heart of deep woods.Her gaze was not vacant,not listless,but the pensive look of a sensitive child,and Clayton let himself fancy that there was in it an unconscious love of the beauty before her,and of its spiritual suggestiveness a slumbering sense,perhaps easily awakened.Perhaps he might awaken it.
The drowsy hum of the spinning-wheel ceased suddenly,and his dream was shattered.He wondered how long they had sat there saying nothing,and how long the silence might continue.Easter,he believed,would never address him.Even the temporary intimacy that the barter of the gun had brought about was gone.
The girl seemed lost in unconsciousness.The mother had gone to her loom,and was humming softly to herself as she passed the shuttle to and fro.
Clayton turned for an instant to watch her,and the rude background,which he had forgotten,thrust every unwelcome detail upon his attention:
the old cabin,built of hewn logs,held together by wooden pin and augur-hole,and shingled with rough boards;the dark,windowless room;the unplastered walls;the beds with old-fashioned high posts,mattresses of straw,and cords instead of slats;the home-made chairs with straight backs,tipped with carved knobs;the mantel filled with utensils and overhung with bunches of drying herbs;a ladder with half a dozen smooth-worn steps leading to the loft;and a wide,deep fireplace-the only suggestion of cheer and comfort in the gloomy interior.
An open porch connected the single room with the kitchen.
Here,too,were suggestions of daily duties.The mother's face told a tale of hardship and toil,and there was the plough in the furrow,and the girl's calloused hands folded in her lap.With a thrill of compassion Clayton turned to her.What a pity!what a pity!
Just now her face had the peace of a child's;but when aroused,an electric fire burned from her calm eyes and showed the ardent temperament that really lay beneath.If she were quick and sympathetic-and she must be,he who could tell how rich the development possible for her?
