Madelon | Page 2

particularly when he walked abroad in night air. It carried as far as the
yelp of a dog; when Burr first heard it he stopped short, and looked
irresolutely at the thicket beside the road. He had a half-impulse to
slink in there among the snowy bushes and hide until his cousin passed
by. Then he shook his head angrily and kept on.
However, when the two men drew near each other Burr kept well to his
side of the road and strode on rapidly, hoping his cousin might not
recognize him. But Lot, with a hoarse laugh and another cough,
swerved after him and jostled him roughly.
"Can't cheat me, Burr Gordon," said he.
"I don't want to cheat you," returned Burr, in a surly tone.
"You can't if you do. Set me down anywhere in the woods when there's
a wind, and I'll tell ye what the trees are if it's so dark you can't see a
leaf by the way the boughs blow. The maples strike out stiff like dead
men's arms, and the elms lash like live snakes, and the pines stir all
together like women. I can tell the trees no matter how dark 'tis by the
way they move, and I can tell a Gordon by the swing of his shoulders,
no matter how fast he slinks by on the other side in the shadow. You
don't set much by me, Burr, and I don't set any too much by you, but
we've got to swing our shoulders one way, whether we will or no,
because our father and our grandfather did before us. Good Lord, aren't
men in leading-strings, no matter how high they kick!"
"I can't stand here in the snow talking," said Burr, and he tried to push
past. But the other man stood before him with another laugh and cough.
"You aren't talking, Burr; I'm the one that's talking, and I've heard stuff
that was worse to listen to. You'd better stand still."

"I tell you I'm going," said Burr, with a thrust of his elbow in his
cousin's side.
"Well," said Lot, "go if you want to, or go if you don't want to. That
last is what you're doing, Burr Gordon."
"What do mean by that?"
"You're going to see Dorothy Fair when you want to see Madelon
Hautville, because you don't want to do what you want to. Well, go on.
I'm going to see Madelon and hear her sing. I've given up trying to
work against my own motions. It's no use; when you think you've done
it, you haven't. You never can get out of this one gait that you were
born to except in your own looking-glass. Go and court Dorothy Fair,
and in spite of yourself you'll kiss the other girl when you're kissing her.
Well, I sha'n't cheat Madelon Hautville that way."
"You know--she will not--you know Madelon Hautville never--"
stammered Burr Gordon, furiously.
Lot laughed again. "You think she sets so much by you she'll never kiss
me," said he. "Don't be too sure, Burr. Nature's nature, and the best of
us come under it. Madelon Hautville's got her place, like all the rest.
There isn't a rose that's too good to take a bee in. Go do your own
courting, and trust me to do mine. Courting's in our blood--I sha'n't
disgrace the family."
Burr Gordon went past his cousin with a smothered ejaculation. Lot
laughed again, and tramped, coughing, away to the Hautville house.
When he drew near the house the chorus within were still practising
"Strike the Timbrel." When he opened the door and entered there was
no cessation in the music, but suddenly the girl's voice seemed to gain
new impulse and hurl itself in his face like a war-trumpet.
Burr Gordon kept on to Minister Jonathan Fair's great house in the
village, next the tavern. There was a light in the north parlor, and he
knew Dorothy was expecting him. He raised the knocker, and knew
when it fell that a girl's heart within responded to it with a wild beat.

He waited until there was a heavy shuffle of feet in the hall and the
door opened, and Minister Fair's black servant-woman stood there
flaring a candle before his eyes.
"Who be you?" said she, in her rich drone, which had yet a twang of
hostility in it.
Burr Gordon ignored her question. "Is Miss Dorothy at home?" said he.
"Yes, she's at home, I s'pose," muttered the woman, grudgingly. She
distrusted this young man as a suitor for Dorothy. The girl's mother had
long been dead, and this old dark woman, whose very thoughts seemed
to the village people to move on barbarian pivots of their own, had a
jealous guardianship of her which exceeded that