The Christmas Miracle | Page 3

a sudden fierce
joy of reproof.
Kennedy winced visibly.
"The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever." Aurelia was
bent on driving the blade home. "The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
late day,--so ez ye kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got grace!
Providence, though merciful, air obleeged, ter know ez sech air plumb
scandalous an' redic'lous."
"Why, Aurely, hesh up," exclaimed her husband, startled from his
wonted leniency. "I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,--yer voice
sounds plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns
'bout a meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye
see,--'kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss----"
"Ye know a lie, then," his helpmate interrupted promptly.
"Why, Aurely, hesh up,--ye--ye--woman, ye!" he concluded injuriously.
Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, "I know I do fool away a deal
of my time with the fiddle----"
"The sound of it is like bread ter me,--
"I couldn't live without it," interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
"Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An'
sometimes it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky,
tellin' what no mortial ever knowed before,--an' then it minds me o' the
tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I couldn't
live without it."
"Woman, hold yer jaw!" Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then,
renewing his explanation to Kennedy, "I kin see that I don't purvide fur
my fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the

fiddle."
"I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled." Aurelia laid an
imperative hand on her husband's arm. "Ye know ye couldn 't make
more out'n sech ground,--though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We
uns hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We
don't need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith,
nor a sign ter prove our grace."
"Now, now, stop, Aurely!--I declar', Jube I dunno what made me lay
my tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I
be powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
mightily mis-put sometimes, an'----"
"I don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion," Kennedy
interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put
Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. "Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye
agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an'
children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single man.
I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or hev
got a pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer
home,"--he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they
approached, to be visible amidst the forest,--"an' ef ye air satisfied with
sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented sperit."
With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,--not even the rude
though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy
shanty of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box
than a house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed
the familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape
of a scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain
ranges, in the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils

of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences,
overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus
the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a
time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large
meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never
before played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty
mood of nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind.
Around were rocks, crags, chasms,--the fields which nourished the
family lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited
mountain plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save
all the arable land for