A Chilhowee Lily | Page 6

foot. Pale she was always.
Now she was ghastly. "Rufe Kinnicutt," she said with the solemnity of
an adjuration, "ye don't keer fur sech ez this, fur nuthin'. An' I
promised!"
He noted her agitation. He felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to wield
his power, "Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made ter
that man--or the word ye deny ter me! An' when I'm gone--I'm gone!"
She stood seemingly irresolute.
"It's nuthin' ter me," he protested once more. "I kin keep it an' gyard it
ez well ez you uns. But I won't be shet out, an' doubted, an' denied, like
ez ef I wan't fitten ter be trested with nuthin'!"

He stood a moment longer, watching her trembling agitation, and
feeling that tingling exasperation that might have preceded a blow.
"I'm goin'," he threatened.
As she still stood motionless he turned away as if to make good his
threat. He heard a vague stir among the leaves, and turning back he saw
that the porch was vacant.
He had overshot the mark. In swift repentance he retraced his steps. He
called her name. No response save the echoes. The house dogs, roused
to a fresh excitement, were gathering about the door, barking in
affected alarm, save one, to whom Kinnicutt was a stranger, that came,
silent and ominous, dragging a block and chain from under the house.
Kinnicutt heard the sudden drowsy plaints of the old rheumatic
grandmother, as she was rudely awakened by the clamors, and
presently a heavy footfall smote upon the puncheons that floored the
porch. Old Byars himself, with his cracked voice and long gray hair,
had left his pipe on the mantel-piece to investigate the disorder without.
"Hy're Rufe!" he swung uneasily posed on his crutch stick in the
doorway, and mechanically shaded his eyes with one hand, as from the
sun, as he gazed dubiously at the young man, "hain't ye in an' about
finished yer visit t--or yer visitation, ez the pa'son calls it He, he, he!
Wall, Loralindy hev gone up steers ter the roof-room, an' it's about time
ter bar up the doors. Waal, joy go with ye, he, he, he! Come off, Tige,
ye Bose, hyar! Cur'ous I can't 'larn them dogs no manners."
A dreary morrow ensued on the splendid night. The world was ful of
mists; the clouds were resolved into drizzling rain; every perspective of
expectation was restricted by the limited purlieus of the present. The
treasure-seekers digging here and there throughout the forest in every
nook in low ground, wherever a drift of the snowy blossoms might
glimmer, began to lose hope and faith. Now and again some
iconoclastic soul sought to stigmatize the whole rumor as a fable. More
than one visited the Byars cabin in the desperate hope that some chance
word might fall from the girl, giving a clue to the mystery.

By daylight the dreary little hut had no longer poetic or picturesque
suggestion. Bereft of the sheen and shimmer of the moonlight its aspect
had collapsed like a dream into the dullest realities. The door-yard was
muddy and littered; here the razor-back hogs rooted unrebuked; the rail
fence had fallen on one side, and it would seem that only their
attachment to home prevented them from wandering forth to be lost in
the wilderness; the clap-boards of the shiny roof were oozing and
steaming with dampness, and showed all awry and uneven; the clay and
stick chimney, hopelessly ont of plumb, leaned far from the wall.
Within it was not more cheerful; the fire smoked gustily into the dim
little room, illumined only by the flicker of the blaze and the
discouraged daylight from the open door, for the batten shutters of the
unglazed window were closed. The puncheon floor was grimy--the feet
that curiosity had led hither brought much red clay mire upon them.
The poultry, all wet and dispirited, ventured within and stood about the
door, now scuttling in sudden panic and with peevish squawks upon the
unexpected approach of a heavy foot. Loralinda, sitting at her spinning
wheel, was paler than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into
hopeless fragments, and a promise which she did not value to one
whom she did not love quite perfect and intact.
The venerable grandmother sat propped with pillows in her arm-chair,
and now and again adjured the girl to "show some manners an' tell the
neighbors what they so honed to know." With the vehemence of her
insistence her small wizened face would suddenly contract; the tortures
of the rheumatism, particularly rife in such weather, would seize upon
her, and she would cry aloud with anguish, and clutch her stick and
smite her granddaughter to expedite the search for the primitive
remedies of dried "yarbs" on