tight. He turned back.
"These thieves are nearly always armed. I think I had best get a pistol
out of my trunk."

"I have no arms, and you know it, coward," said August. "I will not be
put out by anybody, but I will go out whenever the master of this
house asks me to go out, and the rest of you open a free path."

[Illustration: "GOOD-BY!"]

"Jonas, put him out!" screamed Mrs. Anderson.

"Couldn't do it," said Jonas, "couldn't do it ef I tried. They's too
much bone and sinnoo in them arms of his'n, and moreover he's a
gentleman. I axed him to come and see me sometime, and he come. He come
ruther late it's true, but I s'pose he thought that sence we got sech a
dee-splay of watch-seals and straps we had all got so stuck up, we
wouldn't receive calls afore fashionable hours. Any way, I 'low he
didn't mean no harm, and he's my visitor, seein' he meant to come into
my winder, knowin' the door was closed agin him. And he won't let no man
put him out, 'thout he's a man with more'n half a dozen watch-seals onto
him, to give him weight and influence."

"Samuel, will you see me insulted in this way? Will you put this burglar
out of the house?"

The "head of the house," thus appealed to, tried to look important; he
tried to swell up his size and his courage. But he did not dare
touch August.

"Mr. Anderson, I beg _your_ pardon. I had no right to come In as I did.
I had no right so to enter a gentleman's house. If I had not known that
this cowardly fop--I don't know what _else_ he may be--was injuring me
by his lies I should not have come in. If it is a crime to love a young
lady, then I have committed a crime. You have only to exercise your
authority as master of this house and ask me to go."

"I do ask you to go, Mr. Wehle."

It was the first time that Samuel Anderson had ever called him Mr.
Wehle. It was an involuntary tribute to the dignity of the young man, as
he stood at bay. "Mr. Wehle, _indeed_!" said Mrs. Anderson.

August had hoped Julia would say a word in his behalf. But she was too
much, cowed by her mother's fierce passion. So like a criminal going to
prison, like a man going to his own funeral, August Wehle went down the
hall toward the stairs, which were at the back of it. Humphreys
instinctively retreated into his room. Mrs. Anderson glared on the young
man as he went by, but he did not turn his head even when he passed
Julia. His heart and hope were all gone; in his mortification and defeat
there seemed to him nothing left but his unbroken pride to sustain him.
He had descended two or three steps, when Julia suddenly glided forward
and said with a tremulous voice: "You aren't going without telling me
good-by, August?"

"Jule Anderson! what do you mean?" cried her mother. But the hall was
narrow by the stairway, and Jonas, by standing close to Cynthy Ann, in
an unconscious sort of a way managed to keep Mrs. Anderson back; else
she would have laid violent hands on her daughter.

When August lifted his eyes and saw her face full of tenderness and her
hand reached over the balusters to him, he seemed to have been suddenly
lifted from perdition to bliss. The tears ran unrestrained upon his
cheeks, he reached up and took her hand.

"Good-by, Jule! God bless you!" he said huskily, and went out into the
night, happy in spite of all.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE MOTHER.

Out of the door he went, happy in spite of all the mistakes he had made
and of all the _contretemps_ of his provoking misadventure; happy in
spite of the threat of arrest for burglary. For nearly a minute August
Wehle was happy in that perfect way in which people of quiet tempers are
happy--happy without fluster. But before he had passed the gate, he
heard a scream and a wild hysterical laugh; he heard a hurrying of feet
and saw a moving of lights. He would fain have turned back to find out
what the matter was, he had so much of interest in that house, but he
remembered that he had been turned out and that he could not go back.
The feeling of outlawry mingled its bitterness with the feeling of
anxiety. He feared that something had happened to Julia; he lingered and
listened. Humphreys came out upon the upper porch and looked sharply up
and down the road. August felt instinctively that he was the object of
search and slunk into a fence-corner, remembering that he was now a
burglar and at the mercy of the man whose face was enough to show him
unrelenting.

Presently Humphreys turned and went in, and then August came out of the
shadow and hurried away. When he had gone a mile, he heard the hoofs of
horses, and again he concealed himself with a cowardly feeling he had
never known before. But when he found that it was Jonas, riding one
horse and leading another, on his way to bring Dr. Ketchup, the
steam-doctor, he ran out.

"Jonas! Jonas! what's the matter? Who's sick? Is it Julia?"

"I'll be bound you ax fer Jule first, my much-respected comrade. But
it's only one of the ole woman's conniption fits, and you know she's got
nineteen lives. People of the catamount sort always has. You'd better
gin a thought to yourself now. I got you into this scrape, and I mean to
see you out, as the dog said to the 'possum in its hole. Git up onto
this four-legged quadruped and go as fur as I go on the road to peace
and safety. Now, I tell you what, the hawk's got a mighty good purchase
onto you, my chicken, and he's jest about to light, and when he lights,
look out fer feathers! Don't sleep under the paternal shingles, as they
say. Go to Andrew's castle, and he'll help you git acrost the river into
the glorious State of ole Kaintuck afore any warrant can be got out fer
takin' you up. Never once thought of your bein' took up. But don't
delay, as the preachers say. The time is short, and the human heart is
desperately wicked and mighty deceitful and onsartain."

As far as Jonas traveled his way, he carried August upon the gray horse.
Then the latter hurried across the fields to his father's cabin. Little
Wilhelmina sat with face against the window waiting his return.

"Where did you go, August? Did you see the pretty girl at Anderson's?"

He stooped and kissed her, but, without speaking a word to her, he went
over to where his mother sat darning the last of her basket of
stockings. All the rest were asleep, and having assured himself of this,
he drew up a low chair and leaned his elbow on his knee and hi head on
his hand, and told the whole adventure of the evening to his mother, and
then dropped his head on her lap and wept in a still way. And the
sweet-eyed, weary Moravian mother laid her two hands upon his head and
prayed. And Wilhelmina knelt instinctively by the side of her brother.

[Illustration: THE MOTHER'S BLESSING.]

Perhaps there is no God. Or perhaps He is so great that our praying has
no effect. Perhaps this strong crying of our hearts to Him in our
extremity is no witness of his readiness to hear. Let him live in doubt
who can. Let me believe that the tender mother-heart and the loving
sister-heart in that little cabin _did_ reach up to the great Heart that
is over us all in Fatherly love, did find a real comfort for themselves,
and did bring a strength-giving and sanctifying something upon the head
of the young man, who straightway rose up refreshed, and departed out
into the night, leaving behind him mother and sister straining their
eyes after him in the blackness, and carrying with him thoughts and
memories, and--who shall doubt?--a genuine heavenly inspiration that
saved him in the trials in which we shall next meet him.

At two o'clock that night August Wehle stood upon the shore of the Ohio
in company with Andrew Anderson, the Backwoods Philosopher. Andrew waved
a fire-brand at the steamboat "Isaac Shelby," which was coming round the
bend. And the captain tapped his bell three times and stopped his
engines. Then the yawl took the two men aboard, and two days afterward
Andrew came back alone.



CHAPTER XX.

THE STEAM-DOCTOR.

To return to the house of Samuel Anderson.

Scarcely had August passed out the door when Mrs. Anderson fell into a
fit of hysterics, and declared that she was dying of heart-disease. Her
time had come at last! She was murdered! Murdered by her own daughter's
ingratitude and disobedience! Struck down in her own house! And what
grieved her most was that she should never live to see the end of
the world!

And indeed she seemed to be dying. Nothing is more frightful than a good
solid fit of hysterics. Cynthy Ann, inwardly condemning herself as she
always did, lifted the convulsed patient, who seemed to be anywhere in
her last ten breaths, and carried her, with Mr. Anderson's aid, down to
her room, and while Jonas saddled the horse, Mr. Anderson put on his hat
and prepared to go for the doctor.

"Samuel! O Sam-u-el! Oh-h-h-h-h!" cried Mrs. Anderson, with rising and
falling inflections that even patient Dr. Rush could never have
analyzed, laughing insanely and weeping piteously in the same breath, in
the same word; running it up and down the gamut in an uncontrolled and
uncontrollable way; now whooping like a savage, and now sobbing like the
last breath of a broken-hearted. "Samuel! Sam-u-el! O Samuel! Ha! ha!
ha! h-a-a! Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h! You won't leave me to die alone! After the
wife I've been to you, you won't leave me to die alone! No-o-o-o-o!
HOO-HOO-oo-OO! You musn't. You shan't. Send Jonas, and you stay by me!
Think--" here her breath died away, and for a moment she seemed really
to be dying. "Think," she gasped, and then sank away again. After a
minute she opened her eyes, and, with characteristic pertinacity, took
up the sentence just where she had left off. She had carefully kept her
place throughout the period of unconsciousness. But now she spoke, not
with a gasp, but in that shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of
hysteria; that voice--half yell--that makes every nerve of the listener
jangle with the discord. "Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think what
a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed and scrubbed and
drudged all these years like a faithful and industrious wife, never
neglecting my duty. And now--oh-h-h-h--now to be left alone in my--"
Here she ceased to breathe again for a while. "In my last hours to die,
to die! to die with, out--without--Oh-h-h!" What Mrs. Anderson was left
to die without she never stated. Mr. Anderson had beckoned to Jonas when
he came in, and that worthy had gone off in a leisurely trot to get the
"steam-doctor."

[Illustration: "CORN-SWEATS AND CALAMUS."]

Dr. Ketchup had been a blacksmith, but bard work disagreed with his
constitution. He felt that he, was made for something better than
shoeing horses. This ambitious thought was first suggested to him by the
increasing portliness of his person, which, while it made stooping over
a horse's hoof inconvenient, also impressed him with the fact that his
aldermanic figure would really adorn a learned profession. So he bought
one of those little hand-books which the founder of the Thomsonian
system sold dirt-cheap at twenty dollars apiece, and which told how to
cure or kill in every case. The owners of these important treasures of
invaluable information were under bonds not to disclose the profound
secrets therein contained, the fathomless wisdom which taught them how
to decide in any given case whether ginseng or a corn-sweat was the
required remedy. And the invested twenty dollars had brought the shrewd
blacksmith a handsome return.

"Hello!" said Jonas in true Western style, as he reined up in front of
Dr. Ketchup's house in the outskirts of Brayville. "Hello the house!"
But Dr. Ketchup was already asleep. "Takes a mighty long time to wake up
a fat man," soliloquized Jonas. "He gits so used to hearin' hisself
snore that he can't tell the difference 'twixt snorin' and thunder.
Hello! Hello the house! I say, hello the blacksmith-shop! Dr. Ketchup,
why don't you git up? Hello! Corn-sweats and calamus! Hello! Whoop!
Hurrah for Jackson and Dr. Ketchup! Hello! Thunderation! Stop thief!
Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Murder! Help! Help! Hurrah! Treed the coon
at last!"

This last exclamation greeted the appearance of Dr. Ketchup's head at
the window.

"Are you drunk, Jonas Harrison? Go 'way with your hollering, or I'll
have you took up," said Ketchup.

"You'll find that tougher work than making horseshoes any day, my
respectable friend and feller-citizen. I'll have you took up fer
sleeping so sound and snorin' so loud as to disturb all creation and the
rest of your neighbors. I've heard you ever sence I left Anderson's, and
thought 'twas a steamboat. Come, my friend, git on your clothes and
accouterments, fer Mrs. Anderson is a-dyin' or a-lettin' on to be
a-dyin' fer a drink of ginseng-tea or a corn-sweat or some other
decoction of the healin' art. Come, I fotch two hosses, so you shouldn't
lose no time a saddlin' your'n, though I don't doubt the ole woman'd git
well ef you never gin her the light of your cheerful count'nance.
She'd git well fer spite, and hire a calomel-doctor jist to make you
mad. I'd jest as soon and a little sooner expect a female wasp to die of
heart-disease as her."

[Illustration: "FIRE! MURDER!! HELP!!!"]

The head of Dr. Ketchup had disappeared from the window about the middle
of this speech, and the remainder of it came by sheer force of internal
pressure, like the flowing of an artesian well.

Dr. Ketchup walked out, with ruffled dignity, carefully dressed. His
immaculate clothes and his solemn face were the two halves of his stock
in trade. Under the clothes lay buried Ketchup the blacksmith; under the
wiseacre face was Ketchup the ignoramus. Ignoramus he was, but not a
fool. As he rode along back with Jonas, he plied the latter with
questions. If he could get the facts of the case out of Jonas, he would
pretend to have inferred them from the symptoms and thus add to
his credit.

"What caused this attack, Jonas?"

"I 'low she caused it herself. Generally does, my friend," said Jonas.

"Had anything occurred to excite her?"

"Well, yes, I 'low they had; consid'able, if not more."

"What was it?"

"Well, you see she'd been to Hankins's preachin'. Now, I 'low, my
medical friend, the day of jedgment a'n't a pleasin' prospeck to anybody
that's jilted one brother to marry another, and then cheated the jilted
one outen his sheer of his lamented father's estate. Do you think it is,
my learned friend?"

But Dr. Ketchup could not be sure whether Jonas was making game of him
or not. So he changed the subject.

"Nice hoss, this bay," said the "doctor."

"Well, yes," said Jonas, "I don't 'low you ever put shoes on no better
hoss than this 'ere in all your days--as a blacksmith. Did you now, my
medical friend?"

"No, I think not," said Ketchup testily, and was silent.

Mrs. Anderson had grown impatient at the doctor's delay. "Samuel! Oo!
oo! oo! Samuel! My dear, I'm dying. Jonas don't care. He wouldn't hurry.
I wonder you trusted _him!_ If you had been dying, I should have gone
myself for the doctor. Oo! oo! oo! _oh!_ If I should die, nobody would
be sorry."

Abigail Anderson was not to blame for telling the truth so exactly in
this last sentence. It was an accident. She might have recalled it but
that Dr. Ketchup walked in at that moment.

He felt her pulse; looked at her tongue; said that it was heart-disease,
caused by excitement. He thought it must be religious excitement. She
should have a corn-sweat and some wafer-ash tea. The corn-sweat would
act as a tonic and strengthen the pericardium. The wafer-ash would cause
a tendency of blood to the head, and thus relieve the pressure on the
juggler-vein. Cynthy Ann listened admiringly to Dr. Ketchup's
incomprehensible, oracular utterances, and then speedily put a bushel of
ear-corn in the great wash-boiler, which was already full of hot water
in expectation of such a prescription, and set the wafer-ash to draw.

Julia had, up to this time, stood outside her mother's door trembling
with fear, and not daring to enter. She longed to do something, but did
not know how it would be received. Now, while the deep, sonorous voice
of Ketchup occupied the attention of all, she crept in and stood at the
foot of Mrs. Anderson's bed. The mother, recovering from her twentieth
dying spell, saw her.

"Take her away! She has killed me! She wants me to die! _I_ know! Take
her away!"

And Julia went to her own room and shut herself up in darkness and in
wretchedness, but in all that miserable night there came to her not one
regret that she had reached her hand to the departing August.

The neighbor-women came in and pretended to do something for the
invalid, but really they sat by the kitchen-stove and pumped Cynthy Ann
and the doctor, and managed in some way to connect Julia with her
mother's illness, and shook their heads. So that when Julia crept
down-stairs at midnight, in hope of being useful, she found herself
looked at inquisitively, and felt herself to be such an object of
attention that she was glad to take the advice of Cynthy Ann and find
refuge in her own room. On the stairs she met Jonas, who said as
she passed:

"Don't fret yourself, little turtle-dove. Don't pay no 'tention to ole
Ketchup. Your ma won't die, not even with his corn-sweats to waft her on
to glory. You done your duty to-night like one of Fox's martyrs, and
like George Washi'ton with his little cherry-tree and hatchet. And
you'll git your reward, if not in the next world, you'll have it
in this."

Julia lay down awhile, and then sat up, looking out into the darkness.
Perhaps God was angry with her for loving August; perhaps she was making
an idol of him. When Julia came to think that her love for August was in
antagonism to the love of God, she did not hesitate which she would
choose. All the best of her nature was loyal to August, whom she "had
seen," as the Apostle John has it. She could not reason it out, but a
God who seemed to be in opposition to the purest and best emotion of her
heart was a God she could not love. August and the love of August were
known quantities. God and the love of God were unknown, and the God of
whom Cynthy spoke (and of whom many a mistaken preacher has spoken),
that was jealous of Mrs. Pearson's love for her baby, and that killed it
because it was his rival, was not a God that she could love without
being a traitor to all the good that God had put in her heart. The God
that was keeping August away from her because he was jealous of the one
beautiful thing in her life was a Moloch, and she deliberately
determined that she would not worship or love him. The True God, who is
a Father, and who is not Supreme Selfishness, doing all for His own
glory, as men falsely declare; the True God--who does all things for the
good of others--loved her, I doubt not, for refusing to worship the
Conventional Deity thus presented to her mind. Even as He has pitied
many a mother that rebelled against the Governor of the Universe,
because she was told the Governor of the Universe, in a petty seeking
for his own glory, had taken away her "idols."

But Julia looked up at the depths between the stars, and felt how great
God must be, and her rebellion against Him seemed a war at fearful odds.
And then the sense of God's omnipresence, of His being there alone with
her, so startled her and awakened such a feeling of her fearful
loneliness, orphanage, antagonism to God, that she could bear it no
longer, and at two o'clock she went down again; but Mrs. Brown looked
over at Mrs. Orcutt in a way that said: "Told you so! Guilty conscience!
Can't sleep!" And so Julia thought God, even as she conceived Him,
better company than men, or rather than women, for--well, I won't make
the ungallant remark; each sex has its besetting faults.

Julia took back with her a candle, thinking that this awful God would
not seem so close if she had a light. There lay on her bureau a
Testament, one of those old editions of the American Bible Society,
printed on indifferent paper, and bound in a red muslin that was given
to fading, the like whereof in book-making has never been seen since.
She felt angry with God, who, she was sure, was persecuting her, as
Cynthy Ann had said, out of jealousy of her love for August, and she was
determined that she would not look into that red-cloth Testament, which
seemed to her full of condemnation. But there was a fascination about it
she could not resist. The discordant hysterical laughter of her mother,
which reached her ears from below, harrowed her sorely, and her grief
and despair at her own situation were so great that she was at last fain
to read the only book in the room in order that she might occupy her
mind. There is a strange superstition among certain pietists which loads
them to pray for a text to guide them, and then take any chance passage
as a divine direction. I do not mean to say that Julia had any
supernatural leading in her reading. The New Testament is so full of
comfort that one could hardly manage to miss it. She read the seventh
chapter of Luke: how the Lord healed the centurion's servant that was
"dear unto him," and noted that He did not rebuke the man for loving his
slave; how the Lord took pity on that poor widow who wept at the bier of
her only son, and brought him back to life again, and "restored him to
his mother." This did not seem to be just the Christ that Cynthy Ann
thought of as the foe of every human affection. She read more that she
did not understand so well, and then at the end of the chapter she read
about the woman that was a sinner, that washed His feet with grateful
tears and wiped them with her hair. And she would have taken the woman's
guilt to have had the woman's opportunity and her benediction.

At last, turning over the leaves without any definite purpose, she
lighted on a place in Matthew, where three verses at the end of a
chapter happened to stand at the head of a column. I suppose she read
them because the beginning of the page and the end of the chapter made
them seem a short detached piece. And they melted into her mood so that
she seemed to know Christ and God for the first time. "Come unto me all
ye that labor and are heavy laden," she read, and stopped. That means
me, she thought with a heart ready to burst. And that saying is the
gateway of life. When the promises and injunctions mean me, I am saved.
Julia read on, "And I will give you rest." And so she drank in the
passage, clause by clause, until she came to the end about an easy yoke
and a light burden, and then God seemed to her so different. She prayed
for August, for now the two loves, the love for August and the love for
Christ, seemed not in any way inconsistent. She lay down saying over and
over, with tears in her eyes, "rest for your souls," and "weary and
heavy laden," and "come unto me," and "meek and lowly of heart," and
then she settled on one word and repeated it over and over, "rest, rest,
rest." The old feeling was gone. She was no more a rebel nor an orphan.
The presence of God was not a terror but a benediction. She had found
rest for her soul, and He gave His beloved sleep. For when she awoke
from what seemed a short slumber, the red light of a glorious dawn came
in at the window, and her candle was flickering its last in the bottom
of the socket. The Testament lay open as she had left it, and for days
she kept it open there, and did not dare read anything but these three
verses, lest she should lose the rest for her soul that she found here.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE HAWK IN A NEW PART.

Humphreys was now in the last weeks of his singing-school. He had become
a devout Millerite, and was paying attentions to the not unwilling
Betsey Malcolm, though pretending at Anderson's to be absolutely
heart-broken at the conduct of Julia in jilting him after she had given
him every assurance of affection. And then to be jilted for a Dutchman,
you know! In this last regard his feeling was not all affectation. In
his soul, cupidity, vanity, and vindictiveness divided the narrow
territory between them. He inwardly swore that he'd get satisfaction
somehow. Debts which were due to his pride should be collected by
his revenge.

Did you ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no
eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's
eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher,
and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely never been more
glorious than on the morning which he chose for his walk. The black-haw
bushes hung over the roadside, the maples lifted up their great
trunk-pillars toward the sky, and the grape-vines, some of them four
and even six inches in diameter, reached up to the high boughs, fifty or
a hundred feet, without touching the trunk. They had been carried up by
the growth of the tree, tree and vine having always lived in each
other's embrace. Out through the opening in the hollow, Humphreys saw
the green sea of six-feet-high Indian corn in the fertile bottoms, the
two rows of sycamores on the sandy edges of the river, and the hazy
hills on the Kentucky side. But not one touch of sentiment, not a
perception of beauty, entered the soul of the singing-master as he
daintily-chose his steps so as to avoid soiling his glossy boots, and as
he knocked the leaves off the low-hanging beech boughs with his delicate
cane. He had his purpose in visiting Andrew, and his mind was bent
on his game.

Charon, the guardian of the castle, bayed his great hoarse bark at the
Hawk, and with that keen insight into human nature for which dogs are so
remarkable, he absolutely forbade the dandy's entrance, until Andrew
appeared at the door and called the dog away.

"I am delighted at having the opportunity of meeting a great light in
literature like yourself, Mr. Anderson. Here you sit weaving, earning
your bread with a manly simplicity that is truly admirable. You are like
Cincinnatus at his plow. I also am a literary man."

He really was a college graduate, though doubtless he was as much of a
humbug in recitations and examinations as he had always been since.
Andrew's only reply to his assertion that he was a literary man was a
rather severe and prolonged scrutiny of his oily locks, his dainty
mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals, and finally his straps and
his boots. For Andrew firmly believed that neglected hair, Byron
collars, and unblackened boots were the first signs of literary taste.

"You think I dress too well," said Humphreys with his ghastly smirk.
"You think that I care too much for appearances. I do. It is a weakness
of mine which comes from a residence abroad."

These words touched the Philosopher a little. To have been abroad was
the next best thing to having been a foreigner _ab origine_. But still
he felt a little suspicious. He was superior to the popular prejudice
against the mustache, but he could not endure hair-oil. "Nature," he
maintained, "made the whole beard to be worn, and Nature provides an oil
for the hair. Let Nature have her way." He was suspicious of Humphreys,
not because he wore a mustache, but because he shaved the rest of his
face and greased his hair. He had, besides, a little intuitive
perception of the fact that a smile which breaks against the rock-bound
coast of cold cheek-bones and immovable eyes is a mask. And so he
determined to test the literary man. I have heard that Masonic lodges
have been deceived by impostors. I have never heard that a literary man
was made to believe in the genuineness of the attainments of a
charlatan.

And yet Humphreys held his own well. He could talk glibly and
superficially about books; he simulated considerable enthusiasm for the
books which Andrew admired. His mistake and his consequent overthrow
came, as always in such cases, from a desire to overdo. It was after
half an hour of talking without tripping that Andrew suddenly asked: "Do
you like the ever-to-be-admired Xenophanes?"

It certainly is no disgrace to any literary man not to know anything of
so remote a philosopher as Xenophanes. The first characteristic of a
genuine literary man is the frankness with which he confesses his
ignorance. But Humphreys did not really know but that Xenophanes was
part of the daily reading of a man of letters.

"Oh! yes," said he. "I have his works in turkey morocco."

"What do you think of his opinion that God is a sphere?" asked the
Philosopher, smiling.

"Oh! yes--ahem; let me see--which God is it that he speaks of, Jupiter
or--well, you know he was a Greek."

"But he only believed in one God," said Andrew sternly.

"Oh! ah! I forgot that he was a Christian."

So from blunder to blunder Andrew pushed him, Humphreys stumbling more
and more in his blind attempts to right himself, and leaving, at last,
with much internal confusion but with an unruffled smile. He dared not
broach his errand by asking the address of August. For Andrew did not
conceal his disgust, having resumed work at his loom, suffering the
bowing impostor to find his own way out without so much as a
courteous adieu.



CHAPTER XXII.

JONAS EXPRESSES HIS OPINION ON DUTCHMEN.

Sometimes the virus of a family is all drawn off in one vial. I think it
is Emerson who makes this remark. We have all seen the vials.

Such an one was Norman Anderson. The curious law of hereditary descent
had somehow worked him only evil. "Nater," observed Jonas to Cynthy,
when the latter had announced to him that Norman, on account of some
disgrace at school, had returned home, "nater ha'n't done him half
jestice, I 'low. It went through Sam'el Anderson and Abig'il, and picked
out the leetle weak pompous things in the illustrious father; and then
hunted out all the spiteful and hateful things in the lovin' and
much-esteemed mother, and somehow stuck 'em together, to make as ornery
a chap as ever bit a hoe-cake in two."

"I'm afeard her brother's scrape and comin' home won't make Jule none
the peacefuller at the present time," said Cynthy Ann.

"Wal," returned Jonas, "I don't think she keers much fer him. She
couldn't, you know. Love him? Now, Cynthy Ann, my dear"--here Cynthy Ann
began to reproach herself for listening to anything so pleasant as
these two last words--"Now, Cynthy Ann, my dear, you see you might maybe
love a cuckle-burr and nuss it; but I don't think you would be likely
to. I never heern tell of nobody carryin' jimson-weed pods in their
bosoms. You see they a'n't no place about Norman Anderson that love
could take a holt of 'thout gittin' scratched."

"But his mother loves him, I reckon," said Cynthy Ann.

"Wal, yes; so she do. Loves her shadder in the lookin'-glass, maybe, and
kinder loves Norman bekase he's got so much of her devil into him. It's
like lovin' like, I reckon. But I 'low they's a right smart difference
with Jule. Sence she was born, that Norman has took more delight in
tormentin' Jule than a yaller dog with a white tail does in worryin' a
brindle tom-cat up a peach-tree. And comin' home at this junction he'll
gin her a all-fired lot of trials and tribulation."

At the time this conversation took place, two weeks had elapsed since
Mrs. Anderson's "attack." Julia had heard nothing from August yet. The
"Hawk" still made his head-quarters in the house, but was now watching
another quarry. Mrs. Anderson was able to scold as vigorously as ever,
if, indeed, that function had ever been suspended. And just now she was
engaged in scolding the teacher who had expelled Norman. The habit of
fighting teachers was as chronic as her heart-disease. Norman had always
been abused by the whole race of pedagogues. There was from the first a
conspiracy against him, and now he was cheated out of his last chance of
getting an education. All this Norman steadfastly believed.

Of course Norman sided with his mother as against the Dutchman. The more
contemptible a man is, the more he contemns a man for not belonging to
his race or nation. And Norman felt that he would be eternally disgraced
by any alliance with a German. He threw himself into the fight with a
great deal of vigor. It helped him to forget other things.

"Jule," said he, walking up to her as she sat alone on the porch, "I'm
ashamed of you. To go and fall in love with a Dutchman like Gus Wehle,
and disgrace us all!"

"I wonder you didn't think about disgrace before," retorted Julia, "I am
ashamed to have August Wehle hear what you've been doing."

[Illustration: NORMAN ANDERSON.]

Dogs that have the most practice in cat-worrying are liable to get their
noses scratched sometimes. Norman took care never to attack Julia again
except under the guns of his mother's powerful battery. And he revenged
himself on her by appealing to his mother with a complaint that "Jule
had throwed up to him that he had been dismissed from school." And of
course Julia received a solemn lecture on her way of driving poor Norman
to destruction. She was determined to disgrace the family. If she could
not do it by marrying a Dutchman, she would do it by slandering
her brother.

Norman thought to find an ally in Jonas.

"Jonas, don't you think it's awful that Jule is in love with Dutchman
like Gus Wehle?"

"I do, my love," responded Jonas. "I think a Dutchman is a Dutchman. I
don't keer how much he larns by burnin' the midnight ile by day and
night. My time-honored friend, he's a Dutchman arter all. The Dutch is
bred in the bone. It won't fade. A Dutchman may be a gentleman in his
way of doin' things, may be honest and industrious, and keep all the
commandments in the catalogue, but I say he is Dutch, and that's enough
to keep him out of the kingdom of heaven and out of this free and
enlightened republic. And an American may be a good-fer-nothin', ornery
little pertater-ball, wuthless alike to man and beast; he mayn't be good
fer nothin', nuther fer work nur study; he may git drunk and git turned
outen school and do any pertikeler number of disgraceful and
oncreditable things, he may be a reg'ler milksop and nincompoop, a fool
and a blackguard and a coward all rolled up into one piece of brown
paper, ef he wants to. And what's to hender? A'n't he a free-born an'
enlightened citizen of this glorious and civilized and Christian land of
Hail Columby? What business has a Dutchman, ef he's ever so smart and
honest and larned, got in our broad domains, resarved for civil and
religious liberty? What business has he got breathin' our atmosphere or
takin' refuge under the feathers of our American turkey-buzzard? No, my
beloved and respected feller-citizen of native birth, it's as plain to
me as the wheels of 'Zek'el and the year 1843. I say, Hip, hip, hoo-ray
fer liberty or death, and down with the Dutch!"

Norman Anderson scratched his head.

What did Jonas mean?

He couldn't exactly divine; but it is safe to say that on the whole he
was not entirely satisfied with this boomerang speech. He rather thought
that he had better not depend on Jonas.

But he was not long in finding allies enough in his war against Germany.



CHAPTER XXIII.

SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.

There was an egg-supper in the country store at Brayville. Mr. Mandluff,
the tall and raw-boned Hoosier who kept the store, was not unwilling to
have the boys get up an egg supper now and then in his store after he
had closed the front-door at night. For you must know that an egg-supper
is a peculiar Western institution. Sometimes it is a most enjoyable
institution--when it has its place in a store where there is no Kentucky
whisky to be had. But in Brayville, in the rather miscellaneous
establishment of the not very handsome and not very graceful Mr.
Mandluff, an egg-supper was not a great moral institution. It was
otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting; it would
be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of the insiders grew very
happy before it was over. For an egg-supper at Mandluff's store was to
Brayville what an oyster-supper at Delmonico's is to New York. It was
one tenth hard eggs and nine tenths that beverage which bears the name
of an old royal house of France.

How were the eggs cooked? I knew somebody would ask that impertinent
question. Well, they were not fried, they were not boiled, they were
not poached, they were not scrambled, they were not omeletted, they were
not roasted on the half-shell, they were not stuffed with garlic and
served with cranberries, they were not boiled and served with anchovy
sauce, they were not "_en salmi_." I think I had better stop there, lest
I betray my knowledge of cookery. It is sufficient to say that they were
not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other way
mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cookbooks. They
were baked _à la mode_ backwoods. It is hardly proper for me to give a
recipe in this place, that belongs more properly to the "Household