Green Fancy | Page 2

up here and I want to find some place to sleep for the night.
Surely you have a tongue, haven't you?" By dint of persuasive smiles
and smirks that would have sickened him at any other time he finally
induced her to say that if he kept right on until he came to the turnpike
he would find a sign-post telling him where to get gasolene.
"But I don't want gasolene. I want bread and butter," he said.
"Well, you can git bread an' butter there too," she said. "Food fer man
an' beast, it says."
"A hotel?"
"Whut?"
"A boarding-house?" he substituted.
"It's a shindy," she said, painfully. "Men get drunk there. Pap calls it a
tavern, but Ma says it's a shindy."
"A road-house, eh?" She was puzzled--and silent. "Thank you. You'll

find the quarter in the grass. Good-bye."
He lifted his queer green hat and strode away, too much of a gentleman
to embarrass her by looking back. If he had done so he would have seen
her grubbing stealthily in the grass, not with her brown little hands, but
with the wriggling toes of a bare foot on which the mud, perhaps of
yesterday, had caked. She was too proud to stoop.
At last he came to the "pike" and there, sure enough, was the sign- post.
A huge, crudely painted hand pointed to the left, and on what was
intended to be the sleeve of a very stiff and unflinching arm these
words were printed in scaly white: "Hart's Tavern. Food for Man and
Beast. Also Gasolene. Established 1798. 1 mile." "Also Gasolene" was
freshly painted and crowded its elders in a most disrespectful manner.
The chill spring wind of the gale was sweeping in the direction
indicated by the giant forefinger. There was little consolation in the
thought that a mile lay between him and shelter, but it was a relief to
know that he would have the wind at his back. Darkness was settling
over the land. The lofty hills seemed to be closing in as if to smother
the breath out of this insolent adventurer who walked alone among
them. He was an outsider. He did not belong there. He came from the
lowlands and he was an object of scorn.
On the opposite side of the "pike," in the angle formed by a junction
with the narrow mountain road, stood a humbler sign-post, lettered so
indistinctly that it deserved the compassion of all observers because of
its humility. Swerving in his hurried passage, the tall stranger drew
near this shrinking friend to the uncertain traveller, and was suddenly
aware of another presence in the roadway.
A woman appeared, as if from nowhere, almost at his side. He drew
back to let her pass. She stopped before the little sign-post, and together
they made out the faint directions.
To the right and up the mountain road Frogg's Corner lay four miles
and a half away; Pitcairn was six miles back over the road which the
man had travelled. Two miles and a half down the turnpike was

Spanish Falls, a railway station, and four miles above the cross-roads
where the man and woman stood peering through the darkness at the
laconic sign-post reposed the village of Saint Elizabeth. Hart's Tavern
was on the road to Saint Elizabeth, and the man, with barely a glance at
his fellow-traveller, started briskly off in that direction.
Lightning was flashing fitfully beyond the barrier heights and faraway
thunder came to his ears. He knew that these wild mountain storms
moved swiftly; his chance of reaching the tavern ahead of the deluge
was exceedingly slim. His long, powerful legs had carried him twenty
or thirty paces before he came to a sudden halt.
What of this lone woman who traversed the highway? Obviously she
too was a stranger on the road, and a glance over his shoulder
supported a first impression: she was carrying a stout travelling bag.
His first glimpse of her had been extremely casual,--indeed he had paid
no attention to her at all, so eager was he to read the directions and be
on his way.
She was standing quite still in front of the sign-post, peering up the
road toward Frogg's Corner,--confronted by a steep climb that led into
black and sinister timberlands above the narrow strip of pasture
bordering the pike.
The fierce wind pinned her skirts to her slender body as she leaned
against the gale, gripping her hat tightly with one hand and straining
under the weight of the bag in the other. The ends of a veil whipped
furiously about her head, and, even in the gathering darkness, he could
see a strand or two of hair keeping them company.
He hesitated. Evidently her way was up the steep, winding road