goes to his mill, an' they say he'll be throwin' out the old and puttin' in new-fangled machinery befo' the year is up. He's the foremost man in these parts, suh, unless you war to come to Jordan's Journey to live like yo' uncle."
"To live like my uncle," repeated the young man, with an ironic intonation that escaped the ears of old Adam. "But what of the miller's little sweetheart with the short hair and the divine smile? Whose daughter is she?"
Old Adam's thin lips flattened until a single loosened tooth midway of his lower gum wagged impishly back and forth. His face, sunburned and frosted like the hardened rind of some winter fruit, revealed the prominent bones of the skull under the sunken flesh. One of his gnarled old hands, trembling and red, clutched the clay bowl of his pipe; the other, with the callous skin of the palm showing under the bent fingers, rested half open on the leather patch that covered the knee of his overalls. A picture of toilworn age, of the inevitable end of all mortal labour, he had sat for hours in the faint sunshine, smiling with his sunken, babyish mouth at the brood of white turkeys that crowded about the well.
"Well, she's Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter, suh," replied Solomon in the place of the elder. "He was overseer at Jordan's Journey, you know, durin' the old gentleman's lifetime, after the last Jordan died and the place was bought by yo' uncle. Ah, 'twas different, suh, when the Jordans war livin'!"
Some furtive malice in his tone caused the stranger to turn sharply upon him.
"The girl's mother—who was she?" he asked.
"Janet Merryweather, the prettiest gal that ever set foot on these roads. Ah, 'twas a sad story, was hers, an' the less said about it, the soonest forgotten. Thar was some folks, the miller among 'em, that dropped dead out with the old minister—that was befo' Mr. Mullen's time—for not wantin' her to be laid in the churchyard. A hard case, doubtless, but a pious man such as I likes to feel sartain that however much he may have fooled along with sinful women in this world, only the most respectable of thar sex will rise around him at the Jedgment."
"And the father?" inquired the stranger, with a sound as if he drew in his breath sharply.
"Accordin' to the Law an' the Prophets she hadn't any. That may be goin' agin natur, suh, but 'tis stickin' close to Holy Writ an' the wisdom of God."
To this the young man's only response was a sudden angry aversion that showed in his face. Then lifting his horse's head from the trodden grass by the well, he sprang into the saddle, and started, as the miller had done, over the three roads into the turnpike. Remembering as he passed the gate posts that he had spoken no parting word to the group under the mulberry tree, he raised himself in his stirrups, and called back "Good day to you. Many thanks," in his pleasant voice.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH DESTINY WEARS THE COMIC MASK
Putting his horse to a canter, Mr. Jonathan Gay rode through the old gate into the turnpike. His still indignant look was fixed on the heavy wheelruts ahead, while his handsome though fleshy figure inclined slightly forward in the saddle after a foreign fashion. Seen close at hand his face, which was impressive at a distance, lost a certain distinction of contour, as though the marks of experience had blurred, rather than accentuated, the original type. The bones of forehead and nose still showed classic in outline, but in moulding the mouth and chin nature had not adhered closely to the aristocratic structure beneath. The flesh sagged a little in places; the brow was a trifle too heavy, the jaw a trifle too prominent, the lips under the short dark moustache were a trifle too full. Yet in spite of this coarseness of finish, his face was well coloured, attractive, and full of generous, if whimsical, humour. A judge of men would have seen in it proof that Mr. Gay's character consisted less in a body of organized tendencies than in a procession of impulses.
White with dust the turnpike crawled straight ahead between blood-red clumps of sumach and bramble on which the faint sunlight still shone. At intervals, where the dripping from over-hanging boughs had worn the road into dangerous hollows, boles of young saplings had been placed cross-wise in a corduroy pattern, and above them clouds of small belated butterflies drifted in the wind like blown yellow rose leaves. On the right the thin corn shocks looked as if they were sculptured in bronze, and amid them there appeared presently the bent figure of a harvester, outlined in dull blue against a sky of burnt orange. From the low grounds beside the river a mist floated up, clinging in fleecy shreds to the short grass that grew in and out of the bare stubble. The aspect of melancholy, which was depressing even in the broad glare of noon, became almost intolerable under the waning light of the afterglow. Miles of loneliness stretched on either side of the turnpike, which trailed, without fork or bend, into the flat distance beyond the great pine at the bars.
For the twentieth time since he had left the tavern, Mr. Gay, whose habit it was to appear whimsical when he felt despondent, declared to himself that he'd be damned if the game was worth half what the candle was likely to cost him. Having arrived, without notable misadventure, at the age of thirty, he had already reduced experience to a series of episodes and had embraced the casual less as a pastime than as a philosophy.
"If the worst comes to the worst—hang it!—I suppose I may hunt a Molly Cotton-tail," he grumbled, bringing his horse's gait down to an amble. "There ought to be good hounds about, judging from the hang-dog look of the natives. Why in thunder did the old boy want to bury himself and his heirs forever in this god-forsaken land's end, and what in the deuce have mother and Aunt Kesiah done with themselves down here for the last twenty years? Two thousand acres? Damn it! I'd rather have six feet on the good English soil! Came to get rid of one woman, did he?—and tumbled into a pretty puddle with another as soon as he got here. By George, it's in the bone and it is obliged to come out in the blood. A Gay will go on ogling the sex, I suppose, as long as he is able to totter back from the edge of the grave."
As he approached the blazed pine, a spot of darkness, which he had at first mistaken for a small tree, detached itself from the surrounding shadows, and assumed gradually a human shape. His immediate impression was that the shape was a woman and that she was young. With his next breath he became aware that she was also beautiful. In the fading light her silhouette stood out as distinctly against the mellow background of the sky, as did the great pine which marked the almost obliterated path over the fields. Her dress was the ordinary calico one, of some dull purplish shade, worn by the wives and daughters of the neighbouring farmers; and on her bare white arm, with its upturned sleeve, she carried a small split basket half filled with persimmons. She was of an almost pure Saxon type—tall, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, with a skin the colour of new milk, and soft ashen hair parted smoothly over her ears and coiled in a large, loose knot at the back of her head. As he reached her she smiled faintly and a little brown mole at the corner of her mouth played charmingly up and down. After the first minute, Gay found himself fascinated by this single imperfection in her otherwise flawless features. More than her beauty he felt that it stirred his blood and aroused in him the physical tenderness which he associated always with some vague chivalrous impulse.
She moved slightly when he dismounted beside her, and a number of small splotches of black circling around her resolved themselves into a bodyguard of little negroes, clad in checked pinafores, with the scant locks wrapped tightly with crimson cotton.
"May I let down the bars for you?" he asked, turning to look into her face with a smile, "and do you take your collection of piccaninnies along for protection or for amusement?"
"Grandma doesn't like me to go out alone, sir—so many dreadful things happen," she answered gently, with an utter absence of humour. "I can't take anybody who is at work, so I let the little
