CHAPTER IX.
THE INTERLOPER
LANCE found his father and Octavia Gentry awaiting him in the lean-to kitchen, Kimbro Cleaverage anxious and deprecating. Old Ajax had dodged the issue, and Sylvane was out in the other room trying to get the boys and girls to playing again. But Callista was there – not beside her mother – she stood near the door, a little pale and looking anywhere but at her bridegroom. Lance Cleaverage's eye, half scornful, swept the scattered group and read their attitude aright.
"Anything the matter with you-all?" he inquired suavely.
"Yes, they's a-plenty the matter with us, and with all decent and respectable persons here in this house gathered this night," the Widow Griever began in a high, shaking, unnatural voice.
"I reckon all that means Ola Derf, for short," cut in Lance, not choosing to be bored with a lengthy harangue.
"Yes, it does," Roxy told him. "That thar gal would never have been bidden to Miz. Gentry's house. Callisty would never have been called on to even herself with sech, long as she staid under her gran'pappy's roof. And when it comes to what it did out in 'tother room, it's more than Callisty that suffers."
"Suffers!" echoed her brother with a contemptuous grin. "Well, if that don't beat my time! I reckon Ola Derf cain't eat any of you-all. She's just a little old gal, and you're a good-sized crowd of able-bodied folks – what harm can she do you?"
"Well, Lance," began his mother-in-law, with studied moderation, though she was plainly incensed, "I do not think, hit's any way for you to do – evening Callista with such folks. She ain't used to it."
Lance looked to where Callista yet held aloof near the door, pale and silent, avoiding his eye.
"A man and his wife are one," he said, with less confidence than would have been his earlier in the day. "What's good enough for me is good enough for Callista."
He got no sign of agreement from his bride – and he had expected it.
"Son, I think you made a mistake to bid that Derf gal here," spoke old Kimbro mildly. "But don't you let her start up any foolishness, and we'll all get through without further trouble."
"Yes," broke in the Widow Griever's most rasping tones. "She called the game I was a-showin' the boys and gals a Virginia Reel, an' 'lowed she'd call off for us. Call off!" Roxy snorted. "A lot of perfessin' Christians to dance – dance to Ola Derf's callin' off!"
Once more Lance's eye swept the circle of hostile, alien faces. His sense of fair play was touched. Also, he felt himself pushed outside and set to defending his solitary camp, with the whole front of respectability arrayed against him. This, so far as the others were concerned, was the usual thing; it daunted him not at all. But when he looked to Callista, and saw that at the first call she had left him – left him alone – arrayed herself with the enemy – a new, strange, stinging pain went through his spirit. He smiled, while odd lights began to bicker in his eyes.
"O-oo-oh," he said in a soft, careless voice, "didn't you-all know that I aim to have dancin'? Why, of course I do." And he walked away with head aslant, leaving them dumb.
It was but a retort, the usual quick defiance from the Lance Cleaverage who would not be catechized, reproved; yet when he entered the outer room and found Ola drawn over at one side, unfriended, while a knot of whispering girls, quite across the floor from her, cast glances athwart shoulders in her direction, the good will of old comradeship, the anger of the host who sees his guest mistreated, pushed forward his resolution.
"I reckon I'd better be goin' home," Ola said to the pale Callista, who followed her husband from the back room. "Looks like I'm in the way here; and mebbe Lance ort not to have bid me – hit's yo' house."
The bride looked from her bridegroom to the brown girl strangely. In her own fashion, she was as unwilling to be outdone as Lance himself. "This here is Lance's house," she said coldly. "He bids them that he chooses to it. But I reckon he don't aim to have any dancin'."
Roxy Griever paused in the doorway and peered in.
"I reckon the trouble is that none of the folks here know how to dance," Ola was saying doubtfully. "Let's you and me show 'em, Lance. Come on."
Wildly, the sister cast about her for aid. Old Ajax regarded the scene with the same covert enjoyment he had given another domestic embroglio. Her father had slipped through a back door under pretense of seeing to the horse. Her glance fell on Flenton Hands. This was the man for her need.
Earlier in the evening, when Flenton made his appearance in Lance Cleaverage's house, accompanying his sisters, Octavia had murmured, "Well, I vow! Ef I'd 'a' been him, ox chains and plow lines couldn't have drug me here, after what was said an' done last night." Even Roxana had wondered at the cold obtuseness that could prompt the acceptance on Flent's part of that general invitation Lance had flung back over his shoulder to the deserted wedding guests, and looked in vain to see what it was that Hands expected to gain by his attitude. There was some whispering and staring among the other guests, but Flenton Hands was admitted to be "quare," and his connection with the Settlement offered a ready means of accounting for his not doing things like other people. Now the Widow Griever felt that Providence – it is wonderful how people of her sort find Providence ever retained on their own side of the case – had dictated the attendance of this exemplary and godly person, second only in authority concerning church matters to Brother Drumright. She hastily dragged him aside, pouring out the whole matter, in voluble, hissing whispers, with many backward jerks of the head or thumb toward where Ola and Lance, in the midst of a group of boys and girls, still laughed and joked.
"I don't know as I ort to mix into this here business," Hands began cautiously – the man was not altogether a fool. "The way things has turned out, looks like I ain't got no call to interfere."
"'Course you have," Roxy Griever told him. "Preacher Drumright ain't here – ef he was, I'd not even have to name it to him; he'd walk right up to Lance Cleaverage in a minute – spite o' the way Lance done him last night – an' tell him what he ort an' ort not to do. An' yo' the next after Preacher Drumright. Go 'long, Flenton. Speak to him. Mr. Gentry won't, an' Poppy's done left to git out of hit. Poppy never would do what he ort where Lance was consarned. He wouldn't give that boy discipline when he could have kivvered him with one hand – an' now look at the fruits of it!"
Thus urged, Flenton made a somewhat laborious progress toward the middle of the room. Deep in that curious, indirect, unsound nature of his was the hankering to brave Lance Cleaverage in his own house, to insult and overcome him there before Callista; but the pluck required to undertake the enterprise was not altogether moral courage; in spite of the laws of hospitality, there might be some physical demand in the matter, and this Flenton was scarcely prepared to answer.
He halted long at his host's shoulder, seeking an opportunity to enter the conversation. Ola paid no attention to him; Callista stood a little apart from the two, looking down, playing with a fold of her skirt. Finally, most of the people in the room noted something strained and peculiar in the situation of affairs, and began to stare and listen. Flenton cleared his throat.
"Brother Cleaverage," he essayed in a rather husky voice.
Lance wheeled upon him with eyes alight. Thrusting his hands far down in his pockets, he stared at Flenton Hands from head to foot. Then his glance traveled to the widow behind Flenton's shoulder.
"We-e-ell, well," he drawled, with a lazy laugh in his voice, "have you and Sis' Roxy made a match of it? That's the only way you'll ever get to be kin to me, and name me brother, Flenton Hands."
Roxy's long drab face crimsoned darkly, and she fluttered in wild embarrassment. Hands laughed gratingly, but there was no amusement in the sound.
"No," he returned in his best pulpit manner – he was sometimes called upon to officiate at small gatherings when the preacher could not be present – "no, yo' worthy sister an' me hain't had our minds on any such. But we have been talking of a ser'ous matter, Brother Cleaverage."
The form of address slipped out inadvertently, and Hands looked uncomfortable. Lance shook his head.
"I ain't yo' brother," he demurred, with exaggerated patience. "You' gettin' the families all mixed up. Hit was Callista I married."
The boys and girls listening were convulsed with silent mirth. Rilly Trigg snickered aloud, and little Polly ventured to follow along the same line. Flenton's pale face reddened faintly.
"I know mighty well-an'-good you ain't brother of mine, Lance Cleaverage," he said doggedly. "Ef you was, I'd – I'd – "
"Say it," prompted Lance, standing at ease and surveying his adversary with amusement. "Speak out what's in you. You got me right here in my own house where I'd be ashamed to give you yo' dues. Now's the time to free yo' mind. I ain't fit to have Callista, is that it? She could a' done better – that's what you want to tell me, ain't it?"
There was a perfect chorus of approving giggles at this, extending even to the male portion of the company. The tinge of color left Flenton's sallow cheeks, and they were paler than usual; but he hung to his purpose.
"I've been axed by them that thinks you ought to be dealt with, to reason with you." He finally got well under way. "Callista Gentry belongs to a perfessin' family – she's all but a church member. You fussed with the preacher last night and tuck her away from in front of him, an' married her before a ongodly Justice of the Peace, an' now you air makin' motions like you was a-goin' to dance here in her house. Yo' sister said that yo' father wouldn't do nothin', and she axed me would I name these things out to you; and I said I would. Thar. I've spoke as I was axed. Looks like the man that's got Callista Gentry could afford to behave hisself."
With each new accusation, Lance's lids had dropped a bit lower over the bright eyes, till now a mere line of fire showed between the lashes, and followed the movement of Flenton's heavily-swung shoulders, as he emphasized his words with uncouth shruggings. Yet when all was said, only the conclusion seemed to stay in Lance's mind. He was asked to do and be much because he had Callista. But what of the bride? Was not something due from Callista because she had him?
"'Pears to me like you're in a mighty curious place, Flenton Hands," he began in a silky, musing voice. "Ef you was wedded to anybody – jest anybody – I'd shorely keep out o' your way and let you alone. Is this yo' business? Have I asked yo' ruthers? Has Callista? I got just the one word to say to you – an' it can't be said here in my house. But it shall be spoken when and where we meet next – you mind that!"
A sudden, tense hush fell on the room. Did this mean the declaration of war which amounts to a one-man feud in the mountains, and which finally reaches the point where it is kill or be killed on sight? Flenton dropped back with a blanched, twisted countenance. He had not bargained for so much.
The young host looked around. His company had separated itself swiftly into sheep and goats, the elders and the primmer portion of the young people whispering together apart, while the bolder youthful spirits gathered in a ring about himself and Ola Derf. One of these, Rilly Trigg perhaps, took up the banjo and commenced laboriously to pick chords on it.
"Now, if Callisty could only dance, we'd shore see fun," Ola Derf suggested.
Lance looked to where his bride stood, aloof, mute, with bitten lip, listening to what her mother whispered in her ear. Yes, he was alone once more; she was with the enemy. His glance took the girl in from head to foot. He saw that she had removed his first gift, the slippers.
"Callista can dance about as much as you can play, Rill," he said mockingly.
The bride lowered white lids over scornful eyes and turned her back. Rilly laid down the banjo. A couple of the boys began to pat.
"Come on, Lance," whispered Ola defiantly. "I dare ye to dance. I bet yo' scared to."
A dare – it was Lance Cleaverage's boast that he would never take a dare from the Lord Almighty. He flung himself lightly into position. "Pat for us. Buck, cain't you?" he suggested half derisively. Then, with a swift, graceful bending of the lithe body, he saluted his partner and began.
The Derf girl was a muscular little creature; she moved with the tirelessness of a swaying branch in the wind; and Lance himself was a wonder, when he felt like dancing. The circle of young people mended itself and grew closer. The two in the middle of the floor advanced toward each other, caught hands, whirled, retreated, and improvised steps to the time of Fuson's spatting palms.
It was a pretty enough sight, and innocent, except for what had gone before. Roxy Griever had retired in some disarray, upon Lance's sarcastic coupling of her name with that of Flenton Hands. Now, coming into the room with the supposition in her mind that everything was settled in a proper way, she caught sight of the two and stiffened into rigidity. For a moment she stared; then, as the full meaning of the scene burst upon her, she made three long steps to where the youthful Polly stood, taking in everything with big, enjoying eyes, seized her by the scant, soiled homespun frock, and hauled her backward from the room, Polly clawing, scrabbling, hanging to the door frame as she was snatched through.
"Poppy," shrilled the widow, in the direction of peaceful old Kimbro, using the tone of one who cries fire, "you kin stay ef yo're a mind – an' Sylvane can do the same. The best men I ever knowed – 'ceptin' preachers – has a hankerin' for sin. Ma'y-Ann-Marth', she's asleep, an' what she don't see cain't hurt her. But as for me, I'm a-goin' to take this here child home where she won't have the likes of that to look at. I feel jest as if it was some ketchin' disease, and the fu'ther you git away from it, the safer you air."
The last of these words trailed back from the dark, into which the Widow Griever and her small, reluctant charge were rapidly receding.
Kimbro and his son remained, intending to remonstrate with Lance when he should have finished his dancing. Octavia Gentry came and made hasty farewells, hoping thus to stop the performance. Callista stood looking quietly past the dancers to some air-drawn point on the wall, and her expression of quiet composure was held by all observers to be remarkable.
"Oh, no, Mother," she said quietly. "You and Gran'pappy are never goin' out of my house before you have eat. Come taste the coffee for me and see have I got it about right. When I was gettin' my supper for to-night, I found out that there was many a thing you hadn't learned me at home; so you'll have to show me now."
With a dignity irreproachable, apparently quite oblivious to the dancers, the patting, the laughing, shouting onlookers, Callista smilingly marshalled her forces and put forward her really excellent supper. Here her pride matched Lance's – and overmatched it. He might dance, he might fling the doing of it in her face and the faces of her kindred; she would show herself unmoved, and mistress of any situation which he could contrive.
And the supper was a strong argument. People in all walks of life love to eat; those who danced and those who held dancing sinful, were alike in their appreciation of good victual. It was only a few moments before this counter movement broke up the saltations in the front room and the infare appeared, from an observer's point of view, a great success, as the happy, laughing crowd circled about the long tables, those who had joined to forward the dance coming out looking half sheepish, altogether apologetic and conciliatory.
"I'm mighty sorry Sis' Roxy had to go home," Callista said composedly, as she served her father-in-law with a steaming cup of coffee. "I'm goin' to make a little packet of this here cake and the preserves Mammy brought over, and send them by you. I want her to taste them."
The host was the gayest of the gay. But unobserved, his eye often followed the movements of the bride, and dwelt with a warm glow upon the graceful form in its womanly attitude of serving her guests. She had fairly beaten him on his own ground. A secret pride in her, that she could do it, swelled his breast and ran tingling along his veins.
So much for the company at large, for what Callista would have called "the speech of people." When the last guest was gone the bride faced the bridegroom alone in the house which had seemed to her so fine. Cold, expectant of some apology, offended, bewildered, yet ready to be placated.
Lance offered no excuses, but plenty of kisses, praise, and an ardor that, while it did not convince, melted and subdued her. The breach was covered temporarily, rather than healed.
CHAPTER X.
POVERTY PRIDE
IT was inevitable that Callista should find promptly how impossible is the attitude of scornful miss to the married wife, particularly when her husband's daily labor must provide the house whose keeping depends upon herself. Lance, too, though he continued to give no evidence whatever of penitence, was full of the masterful tenderness whose touch had brought his bride to his arms. The girl was not of a jealous temper; she was not deeply offended at the reckless behavior which had disturbed the infare, any more than she had been at his conduct on the wedding evening. Indeed, there was that in Callista Cleaverage which could take pride in being wife to the man who, challenged, would fling a laughing defiance in the face of all his world. It remained for a very practical question – what might almost be termed an economic one – to wear hard on the bond between them.
They had married all in haste while September was still green over the land. The commodious new cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel was well plenished and its food supplies sufficient during the first few weeks of life there; in fact. Lance gave without question whatever Callista asked of him – a thing unheard of in their world – and Callista's ideas of asking were not small nor was she timid about putting them into practice. The pair of haggards might have seemed, to the casual onlooker, safely settled to calm domestic happiness.
Day by day the gold and blue of September inclined toward the October purple and scarlet. The air was invigorated by frost. The forest green, reflected in creek-pools, was full of russet and olive, against whose shadowy background here and there a gum or sourwood, earliest to turn of all the trees, blazed like a deep red plume. Occasional banners of crimson began to show in the maples and plum colored boughs in sweet-gums. The perfect days of all the year were come.
Mid-October was wonderfully clear arid sweet up at the head of Lance's Laurel; the color key became richer, more royal; the sunset rays along the hill-tops a more opulent yellow.
It was not till the leaves were sifting down red and yellow over her dooryard, that Callista got from Lance the full story concerning their resources, and the havoc he had made of them to get ready money from Derf. He had been hauling tanbark all this time to pay the unjust debt. When she knew, even her inexperience was staggered – dismayed. So far, she had not gone home, and she shut her lips tight over the resolution not now to do so with a request for that aid which her grandfather had refused in advance.
"We'll make out, I reckon," she said to her husband dubiously.
"Oh, we'll get along all right," returned that hardy adventurer, easily. "We'll scrabble through the winter somehow. In the summer I can always make a-plenty at haulin' or at my trade. I'm goin' to put in the prettiest truck-patch anybody ever saw for you; and then we'll live fat, Callista." He added suddenly, "Come summer we'll go camping over on the East Fork of Caney. There's a place over on that East Fork that I believe in my soul nobody's been since the Indians, till I found it. There's a little rock house and a spring – I'm not going to tell you too much about it till you see it."
Callista hearkened with vague alarm, and a sort of impatience.
"But you'll clear enough ground for a good truck-patch before we go," she put in jealously.
"Uh-huh," agreed Lance without apparently noting what her words were. "I never in my life did see as fine huckleberries as grows down in that little holler," he pursued. "We'll go in huckleberry time."
"And maybe I can put some up," said Callista, the practical, beginning to take interest in the scheme.
"Shore," was Lance's prompt assent. "I can put up fruit myself – I'll help you."
He laughed as he said it; those changeful hazel eyes of his glowed, and he dropped an arm around her in that caressing fashion not common in the mountains, and which ever touched Callista's cooler nature like a finger of fire, so that now, almost against her will, she smiled back at him, and returned his kiss fondly. Yet she thought he took the situation too lightly. It was not he that would suffer. He was used to living hard and going without. She would be willing to do the same for his sake; but she wanted to have him know it – to have him speak of it and praise her for it.
The season wore on with thinning boughs and a thickening carpet beneath. The grass was gone. Men riding after valley stock, sent up to fatten on the highlands, searched the mountains all day with dogs and resonant calls. They stopped outside Callista's fence to make careful inquiries concerning the welfare or whereabouts of shoats and heifers.
"Yes, and they've run so much stock up here this year," Lance said resentfully when she mentioned it to him, "that there ain't scarcely an acorn or a blade of grass left to help out our'n through the winter. I'm afraid I'm goin' to have to let Dan Bayliss down in the Settlement take Sate and Sin in his livery stable for their keep. The time's about over for haulin'. I can't afford to have them come up to spring all ga'nted and poorly."
Days born in rose drifts, buried themselves in gold; groundhogs and all wild creatures of the woods were happy with a plentitude of fare; partridges were calling, "wifey – wifey!" under wayside bushes; the last leaves had their own song of renunuciation as they let go the boughs and floated softly down to join their companions on the earth. One evening, gray and white cirri swirled as if dashed in by a great, careless brush, and the next morning, a dawn strewn with flamingo feathers foretold a rainy time. All that day the weather thickened slowly, the sky became deeply overspread. At first this minor-color key was a relief, a rest, after the blaze of foliage and sun. A rain set in at nightfall, and a wind sprang up in whooping gusts; and on every hearth in the Turkey Tracks a blaze leaped gloriously, roaring in the chimney's throat, licking lovingly around the kettle. These fires are the courage of the mountain soldier and hunter. Only Callista, warming her feet by the blaze in the chimney Lance had built, thought apprehensively of the time when she should have no horse to ride, so that when she went to meeting, or to her own home, she must foot it through the mud.
It was an austere region's brief season of plenty. Not yet cold enough to kill hogs, all crops were garnered and stored; there was new sorghum, there were new sweet potatoes, plenty of whippoor-will peas – but Callista's cupboard was getting very bare indeed. She looked with dismay toward the months ahead of her.
It was in this mood that she welcomed one morning the sight of Ellen Hands and Little Liza going past on the road below.
"Howdy," called Ellen, as the bride showed a disposition to come down and talk to them. Each woman carried a big, heavy basket woven of white oak splints. Little Liza held up hers and shook it. "We're on our way to pick peas," she shouted. "Don't you want to come and go 'long? Bring yo' basket. They' mighty good eating when they' fresh this-a-way."
Callista would have said no, but she remembered the empty cupboard, and turned back seeking a proper receptacle. At home, they considered field-peas poor food, but beggars must not be choosers. She joined the two at the gate in a moment with a sack tucked under her arm. It was a delightful morning after the rain. She was glad she could come. The peas were better than nothing, and she would get one of the girls to show her about cooking them.
"Whose field are you going to?" she asked them, carelessly.
"Why, yo' gran'-pappy's. Didn't you know it, Callisty?" asked Little Liza in surprise. "He said he was going to plow under next week, and we was welcome to pick what we could."
Callista drew back with a burning face.
"I – I cain't – " she began faintly. "You-all girls go on. I cain't leave this morning. They's something back home that I have obliged to tend to."
She turned and fairly ran from the astonished women. But when her own door was shut behind her, she broke down in tears. A vast, unformulated resentment surged in her heart against her young husband. She would not have forgone anything of that charm in Lance which had tamed her proud heart and fired her cold fancy; but she bitterly resented the lack of any practical virtue a more phlegmatic man might have possessed.
She shut herself in her own house, half sullenly. Not from her should anyone know the poor provider her man was. She had said that she would not go home without a gift in her hand, she had bidden mother and grandfather to take dinner with her – and it appeared horrifyingly likely that there might hardly be dinner for themselves, much less that to offer a guest. Well, Lance was to blame; let him look to it. It was a man's place to provide; a woman could only serve what was provided. With that she would set to work and clean all the cabin over in furious zeal – forgetting to cook the scanty supper till it was so late that Lance, coming home, had to help her with it.
Things looked their worst when, one morning, little Polly Griever came running up from the gulch, panting out her good news.
"Oh, Callisty, don't you-all want to come over to our house? The sawgrum-makers is thar, an' Poppy Cleaverage has got the furnace all finished up, and Sylvane and him was a-haulin' in sawgrum from the field yiste'dy all day."
Sorghum-making is a frolic in the southern mountains, somewhat as the making of cider is further north.
"Sure we'll come, Polly," Callista agreed promptly, with visions of the jug of "long sweetening" which she should bring home with her from Father Cleaverage's and the good dinner they should get that day.
"Whose outfit did Pappy hire?" asked Lance from the doorstep where he was working over a bit of rude carpentry.
"Flenton Hands's," returned the child. "A' Roxy says Flenton drove a awful hard bargain with Poppy Cleaverage. She says Flenton Hands is a hard man if he is a perfesser."
Callista laid down the sunbonnet she had taken up.
"I reckon we cain't go," she said in a voice of keen disappointment. Anger swelled within, her at Kimbro for having dealings with the man against whom Lance's challenge was out.
"I couldn't 'a' gone anyhow, Callista," Lance told her. "I have obliged to take Sate and Sin down to the Settlement and see what kind of a trade I can make to winter 'em; but there's no need of your staying home on my accounts."
Callista looked down at his tousled head and intent face as he worked skilfully. Was he so willing to send her where she would meet Flenton Hands? For a moment she was hurt – then angry.
"Come on, Polly," she said, catching up sunbonnet and basket, and stepping past Lance, sweeping his tools all into a heap with her skirts.
"I don't know what Father Cleaverage was thinking of to have Flenton on the place after all that's been," Callista said more to herself than the child, when they had passed through the gate. Her breakfast had been a failure, and she was reflecting with great satisfaction on how good a cook Roxy Griever was; yet she would have been glad to forbear going to any place where the man her husband had threatened was to be met.
Polly came close and thrust a brown claw into Callista's hand, galloping unevenly and making rather a difficult walking partner, but showing her good will.
"Hit don't make no differ so long as Cousin Lance won't be thar," she announced wisely. "Cousin Lance always did make game of Flent. He said that when Flent took up a collection in church, he hollered 'amen' awful loud to keep folks from noticin' that he didn't put nothin' in the hat hisse'f. I wish't Lance was comin' 'long of us."
With this the two of them dipped into the gay, rustling gloom of the autumn-tinted gulch, with Lance's Laurel reduced to a tiny trickle between clear little pools, gurgling faintly in the bottom.
Before they came to the Cleaverage place they heard the noise of the sorghum making. A team was coming in from the field with a belated load of the stalks, which should have been piled in place yesterday; Ellen Hands and Little Liza appeared down the lane carrying between them a jug swung from a stick – everybody that comes to help takes toll.
When Callista arrived, half-a-dozen were busy over the work; Hands feeding the crusher, Sylvane waiting on him with bundles of the heavy, rich green stalks, and Buck Fuson driving the solemn old horse his jogging round, followed by fat little Mary Ann Martha, capering along with a stick in her hand, imitating his every movement and shout.
The rollers set on end which crushed the jade-green stalks were simply two peeled hardwood logs. Flenton had threatened for years to bring in a steel crusher; but, up to the present, the machine his grandfather made had been found profitable. The absinthe-colored juice ran down its little trough into a barrel, whence it was dipped to the evaporating pan, about which centered the hottest of the fray. In the stone furnace under this great, shallow pan – as long and broad, almost, as a wagon-bed – old Kimbro himself was keeping a judgmatic fire going. Roxy Griever, qualified by experience with soap and apple-butter, circled the fire and kept up a continual skimming of froth from the bubbling juice, while she did not lack for advice to her father concerning his management of the fire.