"They ought to hobble her like a horse," said Milford.

"They ought to break her bones, and I would if I was strong enough," the old man declared. "She kindled a fire with my spiritualist books. Are you a spiritualist?"

"No, I'm merely an ordinary crank."

"Fool, you mean," said the old fellow. "A man that shuts his eyes to the truth is a fool. See this?" He took from his pocket a pale photograph, and handed it to Milford. "That's a picture of my wife, taken ten years after the change. She came to see me not long ago, and I cut off a piece of her dress. Here it is." From a pocketbook he took a piece of white silk.

"They dress pretty well over there," said Milford, examining it.

"Yes. She wove it herself."

"Looks as if it might have been done by a fine machine."

"It was; it was woven in the loom of her mind. Over there, whatever the mind wills is done. But you can't make fools understand it."

"I suppose not. What will become of the Dutch girl when she goes over?"

"They'll make a dray-horse of her. Here comes the old woman. She pretends she don't believe in it. But she does. She can't help herself."

The old fellow hid his eggs. She looked at him sharply. "He'd rather hear the cackle of a hen than a church organ," she said to Milford.

"Yes, it means more," the old man replied.

"Well, you won't rob my hens much longer. Your days are numbered."

"So are yours, ma'am."

"Now, don't you fret. I'll plant flowers on your grave."

"See that you don't plant hog-weeds."

"What difference will it make to you? Your soul will be gone. But what will you do over there? You'd be out of place makin' silk dresses. If you do make any send me one. I'll want it when I marry again."

"Why do you want to dress up to meet a fool?"

"Shut your rattle-trap. It will be a wise man that marries me. If Bill here was a little older, I'd set my cap for him. Wouldn't I, Bill?"

"I don't doubt it. We can all set a trap for a fox, but it takes a shrewd trapper to catch him."

The old man chuckled. She looked at him and said that he would have been hauled off long ago, but that the devil didn't care to hitch up for one--Yankee-like, wanting a load whenever he drove forth. "But before you go, Lewson, I want you to promise me one thing,--that you will come back. You've got me half-way into the notion that you can."

"I will come back the third night, ma'am," he replied, his voice earnest. "When my body has been in the grave three days I will come back to my room and meet you there."

Milford turned away. The old woman followed him. "Do you believe he can come back?" she asked.

His sharp eyes cut round at her, like the swing of a scythe. "An old log may learn to float up-stream," he said. She stepped in front of him.

"You've done somethin' that you don't want known," she declared. "As smart a man as you wouldn't come out here and work on a farm for nothin'."

"I don't expect to work for nothing."

"Come into the house, Bill. Those women want to get acquainted with you."

"Why don't they get acquainted with their husbands?"

"I know it," she replied, with a look, and in a younger eye the light would have been a gleam of mischief, but with her it was a glint almost of viciousness. "I know it. They are always after a curiosity. They've got it into their heads that you've done some sort of deviltry, and they want to talk to you. One of them said her husband was such a dear, dull business man. And nearly all of them hate children."

"I hate a woman that hates children," Milford replied, and the old woman said, "I know it."

Mrs. Blakemore, the tired George, and the tugging boy came into the yard. The woman's eyes brightened when she saw Milford. It seemed that the other women had commissioned her to sound his mysterious depth. His keen eyes, his sharp-cut beard, a sort of sly unconcern marked him a legitimate summer exploration. Men from the city came and went, shop-keepers, tailors, machinists, lawyers, driveling of hard times and the hope of a business revival, and no particular attention was paid to them, but here was a man with a hidden history. Perhaps he was a deserter from the regular army; doubtless he had killed an officer for insulting him. This was a sweet morsel and they made a bon-bon of it.

"I hope you are not going just because we came," said Mrs. Blakemore to Milford. "George, do take that rocker and sit down. You look so tired.

Go away, Bobbie. You are such a pest."

A straining voice in the sitting-room and the tin-pan tones of a piano were hushed, and out upon the veranda came several women. Milford was introduced to them. Some of them advanced with a smile, and some hung back in a sweet dread of danger. Milford sat down on a corner of the veranda with his feet on the ground. A wagon load of beer-drinkers, singing l.u.s.tily, drove past the house. From the lake came the report of a gun, some one firing at a loon. There seemed to be no law to enforce respect for the day which the Puritan called Sabbath, and which the austerity of his creed had made so cold and cheerless. On Sunday night there had been a hop on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, and a constable had danced with a skillet-wiper from town. The children of the New Englander sell their winter piety for the summer dollar.

"I can't conceive of anything more delicious than this atmosphere," said Mrs. Blakemore. "It's heavenly down by the lake. And in the woods there are such beautiful ferns. Are you fond of ferns, Mr. Milford?"

"Don't believe I ever ate any," Milford answered, and the women screamed with laughter. One of them spoke of such charming impudence, and George looked at her with his cankered eye. Mrs. Stuvic said, "Oh, you keep still!" The Dutch girl pa.s.sed at a spraddling gallop, setting a dog at a chicken condemned to death. Old Lewson shouted and shrank behind a tree.

Mrs. Blakemore's thin hand was seen in the air. It was a command, and silence fell.

"Would you mind telling us something of the wild life in the West?"

"There's no wild life in the West now," Milford answered. "It is there, as it is nearly everywhere, a round of stale dishonesty."

"George, dear, do you hear that? Stale dishonesty! Really, there is thought in that. Western men are so apt in their phrasing. They aren't afraid of critical judgment. But they are too picturesque to be simple.

They are like an old garden run to blossoming weeds--the impudent new springing from the venerable old. Did you hear me, George?"

"How's that?" George asked, looking up from a dream of trouble.

"Oh, I shall not repeat it. Mr. Milford, nearly all my thoughts are wasted on him. His mind is occupied by things sterner but not nearer true." George grunted something that sounded like "bosh." She smiled and tapped him on the arm. Her face was thin but pretty. Milford gave her an admiring look. She caught it in an instant and drooped her eyes at him.

Some of the women saw it and pulled at one another, standing close together. But the old woman did not see it. Her eye was not set for so fine a mischief. A Mrs. Dorch began to hum a tune. She left off to tell Milford that she had a sister in Dakota. She had gone out as a school-teacher, and had been married by a rancher. His name was Lampton.

It was possible that Mr. Milford might know him. He did not, but it gave her a chance to talk, and the slim Mrs. Blakemore began to droop her eyes. The man was nothing to her. She wouldn't stoop to set up a conquest over him, so much in love was she with her husband, but what right had this woman to cut in?

"Oh, I could never think of talking commonplaces with a man from the wilds," she said. "He may never have read poetry, but he is a lover of it. Tell me, is it true that certain flowers disappeared with the buffalo?"

"I don't know, ma'am, but a good deal of gra.s.s disappeared with him."

It was a cue to laugh, and they laughed. Mrs. Blakemore said that Milford was becoming intentionally droll. She much preferred unconscious drollery.

Attention was now given to three men who came across the meadow from the lake. One of them proudly held up a string of sun-fish. A fisherman's ear is keen-set for flattery. The women knew this, and they uttered "ohs" and "ahs" of applause. The fishermen came up, everybody talking at once, and Milford slipped away. He pa.s.sed through the hickory grove and turned into the broad lane leading to the lake. He saw Mrs. Stuvic's hired man, sitting under a tree, muttering, a red streak across his face.

CHAPTER IV.

HE DID NOT COME.