A Son of the Hills. Harriet T. Comstock

on the bottom step of the porch, wiped the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand, and emitted one word.

      "Gawd!" He was not a profane man, but the audacity of this stranger who was about to settle down among them for purposes best known to herself, and them who sent her, quite overcame him. Marcia Lowe gave a hearty laugh and gathered the reins.

      "I suppose you never heard of such a thing up here?" she asked amusedly, "but they are getting commoner down where I hail from. It's all very foolish—the restrictions about a woman, you know. She can nurse a body up to the doors of death, but it's taken a good while to bring people around to seeing that she can mend a body as well, just as well as a man. You will let me stay among you anyway, I am sure. I do not want to physic you. It is so much more interesting to live close and help along. Good-bye, Mr. Greeley—you see your name is over the door! I am, do not forget"—the woman's eyes twinkled mischievously—"Doctor Marcia Lowe of Torrance, Mass. Good-bye! You have been very kind and helpful. I feel that you and I will be good friends. Get-up, pony!"

      She flapped the reins in the most unprofessional manner, and the horse turned to The Appointed Way with briskness that bespoke his impatience and a desire for more familiar scenes.

      With curious eyes Greeley watched the ramshackle buggy bounce up and down over the rutty road; he saw the small, slight figure bob about uncomfortably on the uneven seat, and when the conveyance was lost behind the trees he went inside with a sure sense that something was going to happen in The Hollow.

      Once again within his own domain he sought his cracker box as if it were his sanctuary. The fly was still protesting against the dirty window, and the stillness, except for the buzzing, was unbroken.

      Presently, from out the nowhere apparently, old Andrew Townley came in and shuffled across the floor to the armchair by the stove. Then Mason Hope appeared, hands in pockets and lank hair falling on his shoulders. Norman Teale came next, with Tansey Moore in tow.

      "Howdy, Tod?" was the universal greeting as the County Club took its place. The chair of Smith Crothers, and two or three overturned potato baskets—seats of the junior members of the club—were empty. It was beneath the dignity of any man present to question what had just occurred, but every son of them had witnessed it and in due time would touch upon the subject.

      The stove, summer and winter, focussed their wandering eyes and acted as a stimulus to their dormant faculties. From long practice and inheritance every man could aim and hit the sawdust under the stove when he expectorated. Even old Andrew Townley had never been known to fail.

      "There be some right good horses down to The Forge," Tansey Moore ventured after a while.

      "It's a blamed risky thing, though," said Mason Hope, "to let a—lady drive 'em. I've allus noticed that a woman is more sot on gittin' where she wants to git—than to considering how to git there. It's mighty risky to trust horseflesh to a female. They seem to reckon all horses is machines."

      "I've seen men as didn't know a hoss from a steam engine," Norman Teale broke in, glancing sharply at Moore. "Times is when a hoss has to be sacrificed to man—but I reckon The Forge folks was taking some risks when they-all hired out a team to a stranger."

      "That stranger," said Greeley, hitting the nail on the head with a violence that brought his audience to an upright position, "ain't nothing short of, to my mind, than"—he glanced at Teale—"well, she ain't, and that's my opinion! She comes loaded with facts up to her teeth. Knows all the names, and says she's going to settle down over to Trouble Neck and—live along with us-all quite a spell. Weak lungs and all, but she's a right new brand."

      "Hell!" ejaculated Teale, springing to his feet. "If the government has got so low that it has to trifle with ladies—it's in a bad way. I reckon I better git a-moving. Any mail, Tod? I take it right friendly that you give me this hint. A lady may be hard to handle in some ways, but we-all can at least know where she is—that's something."

      After the departure of Teale the club fell into moody gloom. It was always upsetting to have outside interference with their affairs. Even if Teale wasn't arrested the whiskey would be limited for a time, and that was a drawback to manly rights.

      Andrew Townley fell into an audible doze; he was the oldest inhabitant and a respected citizen. He was given to periods of senile dementia preceded or followed by flashes of almost superhuman intelligence. There were times when, arousing suddenly from sleep, he would bring some startling memory with him that would electrify his hearers. He was an institution and a relic—every one revered him and looked to his simple comfort. Suddenly now, as the dense silence enveloped the club, old Andrew awoke and remarked vividly:

      "I was a-dreaming of Theodore Starr!"

      "Now what in thunder!" cried Tod Greeley, who had purposely refrained from mentioning some part of his late visitor's conversation—"what made you think of—Theodore Starr?"

      "I reckon," whined the trembling old voice, "that it was 'long o' Liza Hope. I was a-passing by and I heard her calling on God-a'mighty to stand by her in her hour. Theodore Starr was mighty pitiful of women in their hours."

      Mason Hope felt called upon, at this, to explain and apologize. He did so with the patient air of one detached and disdainful.

      "Liza do make a powerful scene when she is called to pass through her trial. This is her ninth, and I done urged her to act sensible, but when I saw how it was going with her, I just left her to reason it out along her own lines. Sally Taber is sitting 'long of her ready to help when the time comes. I done all I could." Tansey Moore nodded significantly. He had an unreasonable wife of his own, and he had no sympathy with women in their "hours."

      "Theodore Starr, he done say," Townley was becoming lachrymose, "that women got mighty nigh to God when they reached up to Him in their trial and offered life for a life. He done say if God didn't forgive a woman every earthly thing for such suffering, he was no good God. He done say that to me onct."

      "That be plain blasphemy," Tansey Moore remarked. "I reckon he was a right poor parson. The religion he doctored with was all soothin' syrup and mighty diluted at that, where women was concerned. I never trusted that Yankee."

      "The women, children, and old folks counted some on him in his day." Greeley was getting interested in this heretofore myth. Moore nodded his head suspiciously.

      "They sho' did, and a mess they made of it. Did you ever hear 'bout his mix-up with the Walden girls?"

      Greeley never had and, as the last Walden "girl" was a woman of sixty and over, he looked puzzled.

      "Miss Ann, her as is now, was considerable older than Theodore Starr, but she shined up to him and let him lead her about considerable—some said him and her was—engaged to marry. Then there was the Walden girl as isn't now, her they called Queenie. She was a right pert little thing what growed into a woman like a Jonas gourd, sudden and startling! That was the summer that young Lansing Hertford came back to the old home place of his forebears to look about—there was a general mess of things up to Stoneledge those days, and all I know is that Starr he went up into the hills to nurse a fever plague and there he died. Lansing Hertford went off like a shot—but them Hertfords allus lit out like they was chased—never could stand loneliness and lack of luxury. Queenie, she done died the winter following that summer; died of lung trouble off to some hospital way off somewhere, and Miss Ann she settled down—an old woman from that time on! You can't get her to speak Starr's name. You never could. Us-all tried. When things got too hard for Miss Ann she done adopt little Miss Cyn—that chile has considerable brightened up Miss Ann, but Lord! she never was the same after that summer, and I hold, and allus shall, that Starr wasn't what we-all thought him at first. A man don't go dying off in the hills for folks what hadn't any call upon him, lest he has a reason for doing so."

      Moore loved to talk. Some one always has to be the orator of a club, and Tansey, self-elected, filled this position in the circle around the old stove. Greeley was bored. Past history did not concern him and Moore's opinions he ignored. He had not been listening closely, for his thoughts would, in spite of him, follow the ramshackle buggy down The Way.