Chapter 6

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since--I think it was--I don't know where it was," she ended, weakly, and with distress.

The Doctor looked at her keenly.

"Here, never mind him; he can take care of himself well enough; better than he can of you, by the looks of it. Sit down, now; yes, right here on the grass, and drink this."

He gave her a draught from his flask, standing over her threateningly when she hesitated at the entire contents of the cup cover.

"Take it all," he insisted, "every drop. It's the only thing on earth that's health to its enemies and death to its friends."

Sydney leaned back wearily against a jutting rock and closed her eyes. Her head swam, and she resigned herself to the Doctor's commands with the blessed feeling of relief that a woman has when responsibility falls from her own upon some man's shoulders.

A whoop from the chestnuts made her open her eyes.

"Is it Bob?"

"Yes, leading Johnny." Doctor Morgan raised his voice. "Come down here. You're a pretty feller to carry a girl to ride," he continued, as Bob tied the horse to one of the chestnuts and sprang down the slope. "No girl in my time ever shook me like that. Where did she lose you?"

Bob answered nothing to his father's gibes, but bent anxiously over Sydney.

"You are not hurt, de--Sydney? Just awfully done up? I ought not to have let you come. It's been too hard a ride. It's all my fault," he went on, accusingly, while the Doctor nodded his head in agreement, and Sydney tried in vain to interrupt.

"No, indeed, Bob, you were not to blame at all. I made you promise, and I couldn't have forgiven you or myself if I hadn't been here when----"

She fell back against the rock, and the Doctor broke in, by way of diversion,--

"Where's Gray Eagle?"

"Down at the tobacco barn. He got wild and balked the steep part of the trail, so I tied him to a tree and left him to kick it out."

"You walked up, then?"

"Yes, and found Johnny gluttonously eating blackberry-vines on the other side of the bald. That scared me to death, for I thought he'd made way with Sydney in some mysterious fashion,--perhaps eaten her,--and was indulging in dessert! Where's your enemy?"

The Doctor glanced quickly at Sydney, and frowned at Bob.

"Gone home," was all he would say.

They lifted the girl on to her horse, and Bob guided him down to the very foot of the mountain. At the tobacco barn the Doctor untied Gray Eagle, subdued by his enforced loneliness, and led him behind them.

"Bob will stay to luncheon at Oakwood, it's so late," said Sydney to him as they parted at his gate. "You'll not forget to find out in some way if the Baron is ill, will you?"

"No, my dear, I'll watch him like the Pinkertons' eye that never sleeps," returned the old man, genially.

"Mrs. Carroll has gone into the dining-room," the servant told them at the door, and Sydney assumed much cheerfulness as she made her apologies.

"I've brought Bob, grandmother. He's been all over everywhere with me this morning. You'll forgive me, Katrina, for leaving you, won't you? Where's Mr. Wendell?"

"Not back from Asheville yet."

"He went in yesterday," explained Mrs. Carroll to Bob. "I suppose the train is late. It does seem as if they grow more and more uncertain, and when there are only two a day each way, it certainly is annoying, very. You wouldn't know what to make of so meagre an arrangement, would you, Katrina dear?"

"There's the carriage now," said Bob. "The train couldn't have been much over an hour behind time; surely you wouldn't complain of that."

"I feel as if I had been journeying for days," said John, sitting down, "and had seen the sights of far-distant worlds."

"It's the obelisk in Court Square that makes you think that," suggested Sydney.

"Or the battlements on the library building," added Bob.

"Are there street-cars?" asked Katrina.

"Street-cars? Why, child, there are street-cars to burn--electric ones, too. I felt grievously defrauded. I wanted a mule tram."

"The mule is an unfashionable animal," said Mrs. Carroll. "Time was when a handsome pair of mules was considered not unsuitable to draw a gentleman's carriage."

"The farmers aren't using them so much, either," said Bob. "They're too unreliable. Horses are cheaper, too."

"I saw some very decent saddle-horses in town--of their kind."

"What's their kind?"

"Long-tailed single-footers, Katrina."

"The easiest gait in the world," put in Bob, combatively, disregarding the tails.

"It looks so. And not a Derby hat in the whole place except mine."

"And not a silk one, except on colored coachmen," added Sydney, maliciously.

"Did you drive about?"

"I saw all the sights, dear Mrs. Carroll. I have done to a brown the Vanderbilt place, the Sunset Drive, and the junction of the Swannanoa and the French Broad. I flogged a rebellious horse to Gold View, and I scaled Beaumont and looked down into Chunn's Cove. I gazed at the--you will excuse me, I hope--faded exterior of a tobacco warehouse----"

"The farmers don't grow much now," interpolated Bob.

"So I was told. And I beheld with rapture the architecture of the Federal Building. That's the fullest beehive for its size, isn't it? Post-office, revenue office,--goodness knows what's in it!"

"Is the United States Court on yet?" asked Bob.

"Not being a victim, I don't know."

"You don't have to be a victim to find that out. The whole town is filled with the rural population who are interested in the liquor cases,--and our rural population is unmistakable."

"If that's the sign, then it isn't on, for only about half the town looked egregiously rural. Now I think of it, though, the court is going to sit day after to-morrow."

"Of course. It's the first Monday in May, isn't it?"

"Please ask me how I knew it. Thank you, Mrs. Carroll. I see that you are about to oblige me. Know then, good people, that this humble worm that you see before you has had the honor of occupying the same seat in the train with a minion of the law,--in fact, a revenue officer."

"Coming out to-day?"

"Yes. And, furthermore, he paid the flag-station of Flora the distinguished attention of getting out there."

"Was he after somebody?"

"He was about to jog the memories of several people, and I think you'll be surprised to know who one of them is. Mrs. Carroll, how can you expect the less fortunate part of your community to keep in the straight and narrow way, when the aristocracy--yea, verily, the nobility--sets it so bad an example?"

"What do you mean, John?"

"I'm going to write a tale to be called 'The Titled Moonshiner; or, The Baron's Quart of Corn.'"

Sydney and Bob looked at each other with dawning comprehension, yet without the ability entirely to clear away the fog.

"John, are you hinting any slur against Baron von Rittenheim, our neighbor and good friend?" The old lady was radiating dignity and indignation.

"I'm not hinting a thing, my dear Mrs. Carroll. I'm telling you what the affable revenue man told me. About a month ago, it seems, your friend and neighbor entertained a guest who proved to be, not an angel in disguise, but a deputy-marshal on his way to Asheville. Not knowing the official position of his visitor, von Rittenheim sold him a quart of whisky of his own vintage. Whereupon, like all other chilled vipers that have been warmed by this or other means, even from the far days of fable, the beast retaliated. He returned the next day and arrested him."

Mrs. Carroll and Katrina cried out in surprise and indignation. Bob's eyes were fixed upon Sydney, and she, ghastly white, was crumbling her bread into bits.

"The next day? Why, that is why he didn't come here for so long, Sydney!"

"He's under bond to appear at the next sitting of the United States Court, and, as that comes in on Monday, you understand the appearance of my friend the enemy on the train."

"Poor fellow!" murmured Katrina.

"Why in the world should the Baron sell any whisky, I should like to have some one tell me," demanded Mrs. Carroll. "And why didn't we see it in the paper?"

"Probably the name was put in incorrectly," Bob suggested. "The Asheville reporters aren't accustomed to German."

Sydney was silent. But upon Bob, for his father's sake, she laid accusing eyes, for she thought she had a clue to the words that had come to her ears through the clear air as she stood upon the top of Buck Mountain.

X

Through the Mist

One day in the autumn, a few weeks after he had bought Ben Frady's farm, von Rittenheim had taken his gun, and had whistled to heel one of the hounds that had preferred to stay in his old home with an unknown master rather than endure the precarious temper of the known quantity, and had climbed Buzzard, the mountain behind his cabin, in search of squirrel or quail.

As the day advanced, fleecy clouds gathered over the sky and obscured the sun, and then thickened and turned leaden. Suddenly, as the huntsman tramped across a clearing, a one-time cornfield high on the side of the mountain, he saw a mass of fog rolling towards him, and before he could descend below its level he found himself enveloped in the mist of a passing cloud. Heavy as a palpable thing it closed around him, impenetrable to the eye, chilling to the whole physical being, fraught with discouragement and depression to the mind.

Friedrich tried to regain a path that he remembered to have crossed a few minutes before, but under the trees the gloom was too dense for profitable search. Moisture began to collect upon the leaf tips and to drip upon him. The dog did not answer to his whistle. There were no points of the compass; there was no view of the valley below. He was like a ship rudderless. He only knew of a surety that the earth was beneath his feet, and as night drew on, and he could no longer see the soil his boot-soles pressed, he only knew that he was descending.

And then of a sudden came the barking of a dog in greeting, and the bray of a hungry mule, and he found himself close upon a cabin, and by a freak of fortune it proved to be his own, and he was at home.

Vaguely enough, yet insistently, the experience kept recurring to him during the days in Asheville, when he was awaiting his trial.

He went into the court-room in the Federal Building and watched, with a languid curiosity born of its foreignness, the easy-going ceremony of the opening of court. A group of lawyers laughed and gossiped at the front. A larger number of men, who proved to be potential jurors, gathered on one side and talked together more quietly, impressed by the novelty of their experience; while the men who had served on the jury before explained the furnishing of the room to them.

Some ladies were ushered into seats near the bench by a dapper young lawyer. Behind a railing, all about von Rittenheim, in front of him, beside him, and back of him, were the lean forms and bent shoulders of the mountaineers who were witnesses or principals in the whisky cases that fill so fully the docket of this court. From their appearance it was impossible to tell which were the law-breakers and which the bearers of testimony against them. There were old men and boys. Children were clinging to the skirts of their mothers, who had come to town either as witnesses or for the holiday. One woman was quieting a crying baby with the gag that a baby never refuses. She herself was soothed by the snuff-stick that protruded from the space left vacant by the early decay of her two front teeth.

The air rapidly grew heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies and of moist tobacco, and with the peculiar oily odor of corn whisky.

A short man of important bearing stepped in front of the rail and scanned the mass behind it. He easily singled out von Rittenheim, whose cropped head shone fair from among the towsled pows around him.

"Oh, von Rittenheim," he called, "step out here a minute."

"My so good friend, Mr. Weaver?" acknowledged Friedrich, looking at him through the squinting eyes that a sharp headache gave him.

"You'll be held by the grand jury, of course, von Rittenheim, but you needn't stay here all the time. Just drop in once or twice a day and see how the list stands. Some of these are old cases crowded out of the last term, and we may not get to you until Wednesday or Thursday. It ain't a right enjoyable place to stay in, and you'd better go out in the fresh air--you look sick."

"My head does give me pain," Friedrich admitted.

"Your case can't possibly be called to-day, anyway. You'd better go off until to-morrow."

"I thank you. I will when I have seen the honorable judge come in. It is most new to me, these customs of yours."

"I reckon they must be," returned Weaver, with something like pity in his upward glance at the drawn face above him. He scuttled off as a voice cried,--

"The court! the court!"

The lawyers scampered to their places behind the bar, and stood to acknowledge the entrance of the judge.

Beyond thinking him strangely unjudicial in appearance, Friedrich took no interest in him, for he did not regard him as the arbiter of his fate, since he had learned the customary sentence for cases like his, which was pronounced with the regularity of machinery and knew no variety.

He waited until another half-hour's observation had made clear to him the method of drawing the jurors. He left this task still in process of being fulfilled, and urged his way out of the press that held him fast.

The fresh, cool air was as wine to him, for wine invigorates the body while it clouds the mind. His lungs greedily took in great draughts of its light purity, and his blood raced so merrily that he grew confused. Always the pain bit into his eyes, and through his half-closed lids he saw but dimly the people around him and the pavement beneath his feet.

He went back to the little room that he had hired, and slept heavily into the afternoon. When he went out to get his supper at a restaurant, the gaunt figures of his fellow-criminals were at every step. They gazed curiously into the lighted shop-windows; they talked in groups that overflowed the curbstone into the gutter. In a vacant lot back of the Methodist church the glare of a camp-fire showed the covered wagon that was to give a night's shelter to the family whose shadows were cast large against its canvas side.

As he passed each group of them the odor that he had breathed for an hour in the morning assailed his nostrils and seemed to force itself into his lungs. He could not eat his supper, and he spent a restless night, filled with horrid dreams. Sydney was selling whisky to Mr. Weaver. The Judge turned into Dr. Morgan, who grinned triumphantly at his victim as he stood in the crowd behind the rail. He bent to kiss the hand of Mrs. Carroll, and she held in it a shell filled with bird-shot.

Always the sickening odor of the overheated court-room choked him, and his head throbbed unceasingly, and the balls of his eyes beat in anguished unison.

The first electric-car passing the house in the early dawn crashed into his dream as the bullet that was speeding from his revolver to Dr. Morgan's heart, and found its resting-place in Sydney's breast instead. He woke to find himself soaked with the sweat of exhaustion.

The cloud of that day on the mountain still clung around his fancy as he went out upon the street again. A horrible something, as penetrable as mist, as keen as the sting of conscience, as inevitable as the burden of life, seemed to inwrap him. He felt it dully, and wondered how much of it was physical and how much mental, and he didn't care which it was.

He ate a little breakfast, though it was odious to him, and went out to meet again the lantern-jawed mountaineers, who, like him,--_like him_,--were drifting towards the Federal Building.

Yes, he was going to the court-room to be tried for a criminal offence; he was a criminal, a criminal, a criminal. It buzzed angrily through his head.

He stumbled over a child sitting beside his mother on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the post-office. The woman had her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, and in her eyes was the look of waiting that comes to women with uncertain husbands. She cuffed the child, and then shook him to still the uproar she had created. Two more children sat on the curb beyond her, and beyond them, up Haywood Street, men leaned against the iron fence or squatted in pairs upon the sidewalk. Friedrich wondered how they kept their balance, and went on up the stairs, through pools of tobacco-juice, to the court-room, where the day's work already had begun.

He secured a seat, and leaned his head against the wall. A negro man, accused of fraudulently obtaining a pension, was explaining volubly how he had received the injury upon which he based his claim.

His case was given to the jury, which filed out, and the second set of men made themselves comfortable in the abandoned seats, with much scraping of chairs and of throats, and adjustment of cuspidors to the range of each juror.

The case of the next prisoner, tried on a charge of a fraudulent use of the mails, lashed to frenzy the prosecuting attorney. He compared this foul violator of the laws of his country with Sextus and Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. The national eagle had been insulted in his nest, and his screams were ringing from mountain-peak to mountain-peak. The echoes of Mitchell were sending back the cry, and Saint Elias's snowy top gave forth an answering sound.

Von Rittenheim understood enough of the rapid English to realize its irrelevancy, and wondered idly why the man was such a fool, not knowing that it was the presence of a visiting national senator from the hotel that had inspired this eloquence.

The air grew worse as more and more people pushed into the already crowded room. Some one opened a window, and some one else immediately begged to have it shut. There was a constant shuffling of feet and a restless moving of hands. Friedrich found himself smothered by the evil-smelling clothes of his companions as he sat against the wall, and he stood, to bring his head up into a clearer air. The steam in one of the radiators began to thump and clang, and each crash smote a raw nerve in his beating temple.

The feeling of striving against the mist, yielding but inexorable, had him fully in its possession, and through the fog he saw the face of Wilder, the deputy-marshal. Their eyes met, and the malice in the officer's drove the German mad. How long must he stand here and wait among these swine? Yet he remembered many hours of waiting motionless upon his horse, and he rebuked himself for a poor soldier.

Ah, if only he could tell the whole truth; if only he could stand before the bar of the world--of God himself--and say, "I am guilty. Of violating the law I am guilty. I am willing to bear my punishment for what I have done. But if I am guilty, how is he innocent who brake my bread and then tempted me? He who ate my last mouthful, and then offered me an unlawful chance to get more? Is the law of hospitality to be held of no account? And how is he innocent who poses as my friend, who drinks from my cup, who holds my hand in his, and who goes forth to betray me? Is there no law that binds a friend in honor? I have broken a law--the law of man. Those two men of whom I speak have broken the laws of the heart, the ties of honor and of love. I am a criminal in the eyes of men. They are sinners before the face of God."

Friedrich was trembling as he felt these words flow through his mind. The men on each side of him noticed his agitation, and drew away from the emotion of his tense face. So insistently did the words ring in his ears that it seemed to him that he must have spoken them aloud. Yet he was conscious that he had not, and that when the time came for him to face this throng he would never go beyond the first three words, "I am guilty."

He found himself speaking quietly to Mr. Weaver, and looked on at the conversation as if he were a thing apart from himself.

"The next case but one after this will begin the moonshine cases, and you-all surely won't come on until to-morrow morning. You might as well go now."

"I thank you," said Friedrich, and stumbled from the room.

In the corridor he leaned for a moment against the wall, that he might be sure to keep his balance as he went down the steep stairs dizzying before him.

How he reached the court on the next day he never could remember. He was conscious of feeling very ill, worse than ever he had felt in his life. His spine pulsed painfully up into his brain; his eyes burned back in their sockets until the two shafts of anguish met in one well-nigh unbearable torture. The cloud-mist wrapped about him and hindered him, and yielded only to blind him more. The same evil smells reeked around him, and a wave of nausea surged within him.

He heard his name called, and some one guided him to that part of the Judge's platform that served as a dock. He raised his hand, and heard afar off some words about the truth and God. He was bidden to kiss the filthy cover of a book. Dimly he heard a question and answered it.

"I am guilty."

A chair was pushed towards him and he sat down, conscious of a strange silence in the usually noisy room.

He heard Wilder telling his story of his purchase of a quart of whisky, "an' he owned it was blockade," and a long and detailed account of "the Dutchy's" resistance to arrest, in which the ferocity of his behavior would have been creditable to a bloodthirsty villain driven to desperate straits.

A voice asked him if he had anything to say, and he heard himself repeating once again, "I am guilty."

Then the voice of the laureate of the eagle's nest soared, and fell to a whisper, and swelled again, and Friedrich wondered if "example" would be "_Muster_" or "_Beispiel_." And "different class,"--what did that mean? How stupid he was about English!

By-and-by there was silence, and the Judge's voice said,--

"Three months or a hundred dollars."

And then there was a long, long silence.

XI

In the Corn

Summer had come.

The soft days of spring had gone by, the days when the feeling of growth impresses every sense. The haze-filled April mornings, warming into the forcing ardor of noon, had stirred into life the activity latent in root and twig. May's glowing sun, shining through the scantily covered branches, made dancing motes of heat wave above the surface of red clay. The aspens fluttered into exquisite greenness. The sourwood put forth the satin of its tender leaves. All over the mountain-sides and through the forest thickets the oak-tips blushed faint pink, a delicate velvet against the stout bristles of the yellow pines.

Birds flew over, bound for the North, each with his instinctive goal; some almost at their journey's end, others with many a long ethereal mile before them. Some of them sojourned for a few days, following the ploughman as he overturned the mellow earth. Others let this high land be the end of their wanderings, and settled here to the duty of love-making and the pleasures of domestic life.

The azalea flamed in yellow and orange and scarlet glory, a note of savage color on spring's soft palette. The delicate clusters of the laurel, and, later, of the rhododendron, crowned the stems of the parent bush, as sometimes a fair girl springs from a rough and ugly father.

The germ grew strong within its warm seed-prison, and sent inquiring leaflets into the upper world; and the adventurers never returned, but sent back demands for food and drink, as colonists to a new land rely upon the mother-country for sustenance and support.