Chapter 11

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?”

“No, I've never been anywhere but just here in the country, and where you was born, back where we moved from.”

“Well, mother, how old am I now?”

“You're goin' on twelve, Joey dear.”

“Yes, that's what I thought. Benny ain't on'y ten. And he ain't as big for his age as what I am. He's been to the circus, though; his father took him to it at Wheeling that time when he went on the steamboat. I wisht I could go to a circus.”

“Well, maybe you kin when you grow up. Circuses ain't everything.”

“No,” the boy relucted. “Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good deal like the circus. That's the reason he coaxed his father to let him go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?”

“A good deal further, from what I've heard tell,” his mother said; she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire.

He broke out with it. “Mother, what's the reason I can't go with Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They'd take good care of me, and I wouldn't make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me 'n' Benny could sleep together. And the Good Old Man he's always been very pleasant to me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was.”

“Did you tell him it was Billings?” his mother asked uneasily.

“No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don't you think the Good Old Man is good?”

“We're none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain't a good man, I'm afraid.”

“My!” the boy said, and then after a moment: “I don't want to go, Mother, unless you want to let me go.”

His mother did not speak for a while, and it seemed as if she were not going to speak at all, so that the boy said, with a little sigh of renunciation, “I didn't expect you would. But I'd be as careful! And even if the Good Old Man ain't so very good, Mr. Hingston is, and he wouldn't let anything happen to me.”

The woman put her hand under the boy's chin, and looked into his eager eyes which had not ceased their pleading. At last she said, “You can go, Joey!”

“Mother!” He jumped to his feet from his crouching at hers. “Oh, glory to God!”

“Hush, Joey, you mustn't say things like that. It's like swearing, dear.”

“I know it is, and I didn't mean to. Of course it's right, in meetin', and it kind of slipped out when I wasn't thinkin'. But I won't say any bad things, you needn't be afraid. Oh, I'll be as good! But look a'here, mother! Why can't you come, too?”

“And leave your little sister?” She smiled sadly.

“I didn't think of that. But couldn't Jane take care of her? She's always carryin' her around. And Uncle David could come here, and live with them. He wouldn't want to stay there without me, or no one.”

“It wouldn't do, Joey dear.”

“No,” the boy assented.

“You can go and tell Benny I said you might go, if his father will have you.”

“Oh, he _will_; he said so; Benny's ast him! And he said he'd take good care of us both.”

“I'm not afraid. You know how to take care of yourself. And, Joey--”

She stopped, and the boy prompted her, “What, mom?”

“When I said the Good Old Man wasn't a good man, I didn't want to set you against him. I want you to be good to him.”

“Yes, mother,” the boy assented in a puzzle. “But if he ain't good--”

“He ain't, Joey. He's a wicked man. Sometimes I think he's the wickedest man in the world. But I want you to watch out, and if ever you can help him, or do anything for him, remember that I wanted you to do it: a boy can often help a man.”

“I will, mother. But I don't see the reason, if he's so very wicked, why--”

“That's the very reason, Joey dear. And go and tell Benny now that I let you go. And--don't tell him what I said about the Good Old Man.”

“Oh, I woon't, I woon't, mom! Oh, glory--Oh, I didn't mean to say it, and I didn't, really, did I? But I'm so glad, and Benny'll be, too! Can I tell him now? To-night?”

“Yes. Run along.”

He hesitated; then he leaped into the air with a joyful yell and vanished round the corner of the cabin into the dusk.

His mother did not leave her place on the threshold, but sat with her face bowed in her hands. By and by Jane Gillespie came to the door from within, and then Nancy lifted her head and made room for her to sit beside her. She told her what had passed, and Jane said, “If I was a man I would--Well, I know what I would do!”

She did not sit down, but stood behind Nancy and talked down over her shoulder. “Yes,” Nancy said, “that's what I used to say when I was a girl. But now I'm glad I ain't a man, for I wouldn't know what to do.”

“Well, I wouldn't 'a' left a hair in his head. I'd 'a'--I'd 'a' half killed him! Oh, when I think what a fool that man made of me!”

“Don't let Jim Redfield make a fool of you, then.”

“Who said I'm letting him?” the girl demanded fiercely.

“Nobody. But don't.”

“Aunt Nancy! If it was anybody but you said such a thing! But _I_ know! It's because you're so set on Hughey Blake. Hughey Blake!” she ended scornfully, and went back into the cabin.

Nancy rose from her place with a sigh. “Oh, I 'spose you're right about my lettin' Joey go. _I_ don't know why I let him.”

XX

The meetings of the Little Flock had continued ever since the reappearance of Dylks, and in the earlier spirit. But the spring was broken, and since he had said that the New Jerusalem would not come down at Leatherwood, many had lost not faith but hope. Few could have the hope of following him as far as far-off Philadelphia, and sharing the glories which he promised them there. For a pioneer community the people were none of them poor; some were accounted rich, and among the richest were many followers of Dylks. But most of the Flock were hardworking farmers who could not spare the time or the money for that long journey Over-the-Mountains, even with the prospect of the heavenly city at the end. Yet certain of the poorest set their houses in order, and mortgaged their lands, and went with the richest, when on a morning after the last great meeting in the Temple, the Little Flock assembled for parting, some to go and some to stay.

Nancy did not come with her boy for the farewell. They had kissed each other at the cabin door, and then he had run light-heartedly away, full of wild expectation, to find Benny Hingston at the Cross Roads and then race with him to join the crowd before the Temple, where the Little Flock stood listening to the last words which the Good Old Man should speak to them in Leatherwood. Many wept; Dylks himself was crying. The enemies of their faith did not molest them except for a yelp of derision now and then, and a long-drawn howl from the Hounds, kept well back by the Herd of the Lost, under the command of Redfield. He stood in the chief place among these, and at his right hand Matthew Braile leaned on his stick.

When the last prayer had been said, and they who were going had kissed or shaken hands with those who were staying, and friends and foes had both scattered, Braile said to the young man whom he now faced, “Well, that's the last of him.”

Redfield's jaw was still set from the effort of seeing the affair through in as much decency as he had been able to enforce. “It ain't the last of _them_. But I reckon, now he's gone, they'll behave themselves. None of the saints that are left will make trouble.”

“No, with Enraghty out of the way and that kind old fool Hingston, with his example of mistaken righteousness, we can get along fairly enough with the old dispensation. Well, Abel,” he called to Reverdy, who was lounging about in the empty space which the crowd had left, unwilling to leave the scene of so much excitement for the dull labors of the field, “you thought you wouldn't go to see the New Jerusalem come down, after all. How's the Good Old Man goin' to work it without you?”

“He's had to work things 'thout me for a good while now, Squire,” Abel returned, not with perfect satisfaction in the part assigned him by the irony of the Squire. “Ever sence that night at Mr. Enraghty's, I been putty much done with him. A god that couldn't help hisself in a little trouble like that, he ain't no god for me.”

“Oh, I remember. But what about Sally? She didn't go with the Little Flock, either?”

“I reckon me 'n' Sally thinks putty much alike about the Little Flock,” Abel said with as much hauteur as a man in his bare feet could command. “We hain't either of us got any use for Little Flocks, any more.”

“Well, I'm glad of it. But I thought she might have come to see them off.”

Abel relented. “Sally ain't very well, this mornin'. Up all night with the toothache.” Redfield had turned from them, and Abel now remarked, “I _was_ wonderin' whether I couldn't borry a little coffee from Mis' Braile for breakfast; I been so took up 'ith all these goun's on that I hain't had no time to go to the store.”

“Why, certainly,” the Squire replied, “and you'd better come and have breakfast with us on the way home. I came down without mine so as to see the Ancient of Days off, and make sure of his going.”

“Pshaw, Squire, it don't seem quite right to have you usin' them old Bible sayun's so common like.”

“Well, Abel, perhaps it isn't quite the thing. But you must make allowance for my being in such high spirits. I haven't breathed so free in a coon's age. I _would_ like to have stowed Dylks for a little while in the loft with ours! But Mis' Braile wouldn't hear of it. Well, we've seen the last of him, I hope. And now we're hearing the last of him.” He halted Abel in their walk, at a rise in the ground where they caught the sound of the hymn which the Little Flock, following Dylks for a certain way, were singing. “'Sounds weel at a distance,' as the Scotchman said of the bagpipes. And the farther the better. I don't believe I should care if I _never_ heard that tune again.” They reached Braile's cabin, and he said, “Well, now come in and have something to stay your stomach while you're waiting for Sally to make the coffee you're going to borrow.”

“No, I reckon not, Squire,” Abel loyally held out.

“Well, then, come in and get the coffee, anyhow.”

“I reckon that's a good idea, Squire,” Abel assented with a laugh for the joke at his cost. As they mounted the steps, Braile stopped him at the sound of voices in the kitchen.

A prevalent voice was the voice of Sally. “Well, just one _sup_ more, Mis' Braile. You do make the _best_ coffee! I believe in my heart that it's took my toothache all away a'ready, and I suppose poor Abel'll be goun' up home with some of that miser'ble stuff he gits at the store, and expectun' to find me there in bed yit. I thought I'd jest slip down, and borry a little o' your'n to surprise him with, but when I smelt it, I jest couldn't hold out. I don't suppose but what he stayed to see the Little Flock off, anyway, and you say Squire Braile went. Well, I reckon he had to, justice o' the peace, that way. I'm thankful the Good Old Man's gone, for one, and I don't never want to see hide or hair of him ag'in in Leatherwood. There's such a thing as gittun' enough of a thing, and I've got enough of strange gods for one while.”

Murmurs of reply came from Mrs. Braile at times, but Sally mainly kept the word.

“Well, and what do you think of Nancy Billun's lettun' her Joey go off with the Little Flock, her talkun' the way she always done about 'em? Of course he's safe with Mr. Hingston and Benny, and they'll bring him back all right, but don't you think she'd be afeared that he might be took up in the New Jerusalem when it riz ag'in?”

“Abel,” the Squire said, “I don't like this. We seem to be listening. I don't believe Sally will like our overhearing her; and we ought to warn her. It's no use your stamping your bare feet, for they wouldn't make any noise. I'll rap my stick on the floor.” He also called out, “Hello, the house!” and Sally herself came to the kitchen door. She burst into her large laugh. “Well, I declare to goodness, if it ain't Abel and the Squire! Well, if this ain't the best joke on _me!_ Did you see Dylks off, Squire Braile? And a good riddance to bad rubbage, _I_ say.”

XXI

Hughey Blake, long-haired, barefooted and freckled, hung about the door of Nancy's cabin, where she sat with her little girl playing in the weedy turf at her foot. The late October weather was sometimes hot at noon, but the evenings were cool and the evening air was sweet with the scent of the ripened corn, and the faint odor of the fallen leaves. The grasshoppers still hissed; at moments the crickets within and without the cabin creaked plaintively.

“I just come,” Hughey said, “to see if you thought she wouldn't go to the Temple with me, to-night. The Flock lets us have our turn reg'lar now, and we're goin' to have Thursday evenin' meetin' like we used to.” In a discouraging silence from Nancy, he went on, “I'm just on my way home, now, and I'll git my shoes there; and I don't expect to wear this hickory shirt, and no coat--”

“Yes, I know, Hughey, but I don't believe it'll be any use. You can try; but I don't believe it will. I reckon you'd find out that she's goin' with Jim Redfield, if anybody. She's been off with him 'most the whole afternoon, gatherin' pawpaws--he knows the best places; I should think they could have got all the pawpaws in Leatherwood by this time. You know I've always liked you, Hughey, and so has her father, and you've played together ever since you was babies, and you've always been her beau from childern up. There ain't a person in Leatherwood that don't respect you and feel to think that any girl might be glad to get you; but I'm afraid it's just your cleverness, and bein' so gentle like--”

“Do you 'spose, Nancy,” the young man faltered disconsolately, “it's had anything to do with my not gettin' her that hair? I could 'a' done it as easy as Jim Redfield; but to tear it right out of his head, that way, I couldn't; it went ag'in my stommick.”

“I don't believe it's that, Hughey. If you must know, I believe it's just Jim Redfield himself. He's bewitched her and she's got to be bewitched by somebody; if it ain't one it's another; it was _him_ then, and it's Jim, now.”

“I see,” the young man assented sadly.

“She ain't good enough for you, that's the truth, Hughey, though I say it, her own kith and kin. I can't make you understand, I know; but she's got to have somebody that she can feel the power of.”

“I'd do anything for her, Nancy.”

“That's just it! She don't want that kind of lovin', as you may call it. I don't believe my brother's a very easy man to turn, but Jane has always done as she pleased with him; he's been like clay in the hands of the potter with her. Many another girl would have been broken into bits before now; but she's just as tough as so much hickory. I don't say but what she's a good girl; there ain't a better in Leatherwood, or anywheres. She's as true as a die, and tender as anything in sickness, and'd lay down and die where she saw her duty, and'd work till she dropped if need be; but, no, she ain't one that wants softness in her friends. Well, she won't git any too much of it in Jim Redfield. They're of a piece, and she _may_ find out that she's made a mistake, after all.”

“Has she--she hain't promised to marry him yit?”

“No, I don't say that. But ever since that night at the Temple he's been round after her. He's been here, and he's been at her father's, and she can't go down to the Corners for anything but what he comes home helpin' her to bring it. You seen yourself, how he always gets her to come home from meetin'.”

“Yes,” Hughey assented forlornly. “I'm always too late at the door; he's with her before a body can git the words out.”

“Well, that's it. I don't say she ain't a good girl, one of the very best, but she's hard, hard, hard; and I don't see what's ever to break her.”

The girl's voice came from round the cabin, calling, “Honey, honey, honey!” and the little one started from her play at her mother's feet, and ran toward the voice, which Jane now brought with her at the corner, and chuckling, and jug-jugging, birdlike, for joy, threw herself at Jane's knees.

“See what I brought you, honey. It's good and ripe, but it ain't half as good as my honey, honey, honey!” She put the pawpaw into the child's hands and mumbled her, with kisses of her eyes, cheeks, hair, and neck. “Oh, I could eat you, _eat_ you!”

She must have seen the young fellow waiting for her notice, but Nancy had to say, “Here's Hughey, Jane,” before she spoke to him.

“Oh! Hughey,” she said, not unkindly, but as if he did not matter.

He stood awkward and Nancy judged it best for all the reasons to add, “Hughey wants you to go to the Temple with him to-night,” and the young fellow smiled gratefully if not hopefully at her.

The girl stiffened herself to her full height from the child she was stooping over. She haughtily mounted the steps beside Nancy, and without other recognition of Hughey in the matter she said, “I've _got_ company,” and disappeared into the cabin.

“Well, Hughey?” Nancy pityingly questioned.

“No, no, Nancy,” he replied with a manful struggle for manfulness, “I--I--It's meant, I reckon,” and slunk away from the girl's brutality as if it were his own shame.

Nancy picked up her little one, and followed indoors.

“Don't you talk to me, Aunt Nancy!” the girl cried at her. “What does he keep askin' me for?”

“He won't ask you any more, Jane,” the woman quietly returned.

They joined in putting the little one to bed. Then, without more words, Jane kissed the child, and came back to kiss her again when she had got to the door. “Aunt Nancy, I hate you,” she said as she went out and left the woman alone.

Ever since Joey went away with the believers to see the New Jerusalem come down in Philadelphia, Jane had been sleeping at her father's cabin in resentful duty to his years and solitude. She got him his breakfast and left it for him before she went to take her own with Nancy, and she had his dinner and supper ready for his return from the field, but she did not eat with him, and he was abed before she came home at night.

Joey had been gone nearly a month, and no word had come back from any of the Little Flock who went with Dylks. It was not the day of letters by mail; if some of the pilgrims had sent messages by the wagoners returning from their trips Over the Mountains, they had not reached the families left behind, and no angel-borne tidings came to testify of the wonder at Philadelphia. Those left behind waited in patience rather than anxiety; where life was often hard, people did not borrow trouble and add that needless debt to their load of daily cares. Nancy said to others that she did not know what to think, and others said the same to her, and they got what comfort they could out of that.

Now she did not light the little rag-lamp which she and Jane sometimes sat by with their belated sewing or darning if they had not kept the hearth-fire burning. She went to bed in the dark, and slept with the work-weariness which keeps the heart-heavy from waking.

She had work in her tobacco patch to do, as well as in the house, where Jane helped her; she would not let the girl help her get the logs and brush together on the clearing which Laban had begun burning to enrich the soil for the planting of the next year's crop with the ashes.

She must have slept long hours when she heard the sound of a cry from the dark without.

“Mother! Mother! _Oh_, mother!” it came nearer and nearer, till it beat with the sound of a fist on the cabin door. In the piecing out of the instant dream which she started from, she thought as that night when Dylks called her, that it must be Laban; he sometimes called her mother after the baby came, and now she called back, “Laban! Laban!” but the voice came again, “It ain't father; it's me, mother; it's Joey!”

“Oh, dear heart!” she joyfully lamented, and flung herself from her bed, and reeled still drunk with slumber, and pulled up the latch, and flung open the door, and caught her boy to her breast.

“Oh, mother!” he said, laughing and crying. “I'm so hungry!”

“To be sure you're hungry, child; and I'll have you your supper in half a minute, as soon as I can rake the fire open. Lay down on mother's bed there, and rest while I'm gettin' ready for you. The baby won't wake, and I don't care if she does.”

“I s'pose she's grown a good deal. But I _am_ tired,” the boy said, stretching himself out. “Me 'n' Benny run all the way as soon as we come in sight of the crick, and him 'n' Mis' Hingston wanted me to stay all night, but I wouldn't. I wanted to see you so much, mother.”

“Did Mr. Hingston come back with you? Or, don't tell me anything; don't speak, till you've had something to eat.”

“I woon't, mother,” the boy promised, and then he said, “But you ought to see Philadelphy, mother. It's twenty times as big as Wheeling, Benny says, and all red brick houses and white marble steps.” He was sitting up, and talking now; his mother flew about in the lank linsey-woolsey dress she had thrown over her nightgown in some unrealized interval of her labors and had got the skillet of bacon hissing over the coals.

“And to think,” she bleated in self-reproach, “that I'll have to give you _rye_ coffee! You know, Joey dear, there hain't very much cash about this house, and the store won't take truck for coffee. But with good cream in it, the rye tastes 'most as good. Set up to the table, now,” she bade him, when she had put the rye coffee with the bacon and some warmed-up pone on the leaf lifted from the wall.

She let the boy silently glut himself till he glanced round between mouthfuls and said, “It all looks so funny and little, in here, after Philadelphy.”

Then she said, “But you don't say anything about the New Jerusalem. Didn't it come down, after all?” She smiled, but sadly rather than gladly in her skepticism.

“No, mother,” the boy answered solemnly. Then after a moment he said, “I got something to tell you, mother. But I don't know whether I hadn't better wait till morning.”

“It's most morning, now, Joey, I reckon, if it ain't already. That's the twilight comin' in at the door. If you wouldn't rather get your sleep first--”

“No, I can't sleep till I tell you, now. It's about the Good Old Man.”

“Did he--did he go up?” she asked fearfully.

“No, mother, he didn't. Some of them say he was took up, but, mother, _I_ believe he was drownded!”

XXII

“Drownded?” the boy's mother echoed. “What do you mean, Joey? What makes you believe he was drownded?”

“I seen him.”

“Seen him?”

“In the water. We was all walkin' along the river bank, and some o' the Flock got to complainin' because he hadn't fetched the New Jerusalem down yit, and wantin' to know when he was goin' to do it, and sayin' this was Philadelphy, and why didn't he; and Mr. Hingston he was tryin' to pacify 'em, and Mr. Enraghty he scolded 'em, and told 'em to hesh up, or they'd be in danger of hell-fire; but they didn't, and the Good Old Man he begun to cry. It was awful, mother.”

“Go on, Joey. Don't stop.”

“Well, he'd been prayin' a good deal, off and on, and actin' like he wasn't in his right senses, sometimes, talkin' to hisself, and singin' his hymn--that one, you know--”

“Never mind, Joey dear,” his mother said, “keep on.”