In the Border Country

the Border Country, by
Josephine Daskam Bacon

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Title: In the Border Country
Author: Josephine Daskam Bacon
Illustrator: Clara Elsene Peck
Release Date: August 13, 2007 [EBook #22310]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BORDER COUNTRY ***

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been corrected. Any other inconsistencies are as in the original. List of

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In the Border Country
[Illustration]
[Illustration: On a low stool there sat an old woman....]
[Illustration]
In the Border Country.
by
Josephine Daskam Bacon.
Clara Elsene Peck, Decorator.
New York Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909
THE HUT IN THE WOODS Copyright, 1908, by P.F. Collier & Son.
THE FARM BY THE FOREST Copyright, 1908, by P.F. Collier &
Son.
THE CASTLE ON THE DUNES Copyright, 1909, by Harper &
Brothers.
IN THE BORDER COUNTRY Copyright, 1909, by Josephine D.
Bacon.

[Illustration]
Contents page

I. The Hut in the woods 3
II. The Farm by the Forest 39
III. The Castle on the Dunes 89

[Illustration]
Illustrations
On a low stool there sat an old woman.... Frontispiece
Facing page The glass of that window has strange properties. 28
There were no lights but the great moon. 54
The Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad. 62
Here they sat down to tapestry work, green and blue and russet
weavings. 116

The First Lesson
In the Border Country
THE HUT IN THE WOOD
The woman who told me this, and other strange tales which I may one
day try to put together, had no gift of writing, but only a pathetic regard
for those who had. I say pathetic, because to me her extraordinary
experiences so far outvalue the tinkling art of recording them as to
make her simple admiration for the artist little short of absurd. She had
herself a pretty talent for painting, of which I knew her to have made
much in the years before we met. It was, indeed, because I remembered
what hopes she had encouraged in her teachers in this and older
countries, and how eagerly she had laboured at her craft, finding no

trick of technique too slight, no repetition too arduous, no sacrifice too
great, if only they might justify their faith in her, that I asked her one
day, when I had come to know her well, why it was that she had
stopped so suddenly in the work that many of us had learned to know
before we knew her. For now she paints only quaint toys for her many
lovely children, or designs beautiful gardens for her husband, himself
an able artist and her first teacher, or works at the wonderful robes in
which he paints her, burning in the autumn woods or mist-like through
spring boughs.
We sat, that morning, I remember, on the edge of the wood that finishes
their wide estate among the hills, looking down its green mazy aisles,
listening to the droning of the June air, lapped in the delicious peace of
early summer. "Why did you?" I asked, "what happened?"
She gave me a long look.
"I have often thought I would tell you," she said, "for you can tell the
others. When I hear this warm, droning noise, this time of the year, it
always reminds me----"
She looked at me, but I knew that she saw something or someone else.
After a long pause her lips began to form a word, when suddenly she
drew a short, frightened breath.
"What--do you smell it, too? Am I going away again--what is that
odour?"
I sniffed the air. A dull, sweet taste flavoured it, unpleasant, vaguely
terrifying. I looked about carefully and caught sight of a wide-mouthed
bottle lying on its side, the cork half loosened. A brown moth fluttered
feebly in the bottle.
"It is only chloroform," I assured her, remembering that the two oldest
children were collecting butterflies, and I tightened the cork.
"Oh, yes," she said, a deep and unaccountable relief in her voice, "I see.
That odour has the strangest effect on me ever since----" she waited a

long time. At last she said she would try to tell me something, if I
would ask her questions to make it easier for