suggested by a bold spirit capable of more extended flights of the imagination than the rest, that they were “Northerners” who for some unworthy object had taken up their abode within the bound of civilisation; but this idea was frowned down as being of a wild nature and not to be encouraged.
Finally the general interest in the subject had subsided somewhat, though it was ready to revive at any new comment or incident, which will explain the bodily awakening of the sleepers on the post-office porch when Mr. Stamps made his announcement of the approach of “thet thar feller.”
Up to the moment when the impulse seized him which led him to take his place behind the counter as the stranger entered the store, Tom De Willoughby had taken little or no part in numerous discussions held around him. He had listened with impartiality to all sides of the question, his portion of the entertainment being to make comments of an inspiriting nature which should express in a marked manner his sarcastic approval of any special weakness in a line of argument.
Among the many agreeable things said of him in his past, it had never been said that he was curious; he was too indolent to be curious, and it may be simply asserted that he had felt little curiosity concerning the popular mystery. But when he found himself face to face with his customer, a new feeling suddenly took possession of him. The change came when, for one instant, the man, as if in momentary forgetfulness, looked up and met his eyes in speaking. Each moved involuntarily, and Tom turned aside, ostensibly, to pick up a sheet of wrapping paper. The only words exchanged were those relating to the courtesies and the brief remarks heard by the loungers outside. After this the stranger rode away and Tom lounged back to his chair. He made no reply to Stamps’s explanatory aside, and no comment upon the remarks of the company whose curiosity had naturally received a new impetus which spurred them on to gossip a little in the usual vague manner. He gave himself up to speculation. The mere tone of a man’s voice had set his mind to work. His past life had given him experience in which those about him were lacking, and at the instant he heard the stranger speak this experience revealed to him as by a flash of light, a thing which had never yet been even remotely guessed at.
“A gentleman, by thunder!” he said to himself. “That’s it! A gentleman!”
He knew he could not be mistaken. Low and purposely muffled as the voice had been, he recognised in it that which marked it as the voice of a man trained to modulated speech. And even this was not all, though it had led him to look again, and more closely, at the face shadowed by the broad hat. It was not a handsome face, but it was one not likely to be readily forgotten. It was worn and haggard, the features strongly aquiline, the eyes somewhat sunken; it was the face of a man who had lived the life of an ascetic and who, with a capacity for sharp suffering, had suffered and was suffering still.
“But a gentleman and not a Southerner,” Tom persisted to himself. “A Yankee, as I’m a sinner; and what is a Yankee doing hiding himself here for?”
It was such a startling thing under the circumstances, that he could not rid himself of the thought of it. It haunted him through the rest of the day, and when night came and the store being closed, he retired as usual to the back part of the house, he was brooding over it still.
He lived in a simple and primitive style. Three rooms built on to the store were quite enough for him. One was his sitting- and bedroom, another his dining-room and kitchen, the third the private apartment of his household goddess, a stout old mulatto woman who kept his house in order and prepared his meals.
When he opened the door to-night the little boarded rooms were illuminated with two tallow candles and made fragrant with the odour of fried chicken and hoe-cakes, to which Aunt Mornin was devoting all her energies, and for the first time perhaps in his life, he failed to greet these attractions with his usual air of good cheer.
He threw his hat into a chair, and, stretching himself out upon the bedstead, lay there, his hands clasped above his head and his eyes fixed upon the glow of the fire in the adjoining room, where Aunt Mornin was at work.
“A gentleman!” he said, half aloud. “That’s it, by Jupiter, a gentleman!”
He remembered it afterwards as a curious coincidence that he should have busied his mind so actively with his subject in a manner so unusual with him.
His imagination not being sufficiently vivid to help him out of his difficulty to his own satisfaction, he laboured with it patiently, recurring to it again and again, and turning it over until it assumed a greater interest than at first. He only relinquished it with an effort when, going to bed later than usual, he made up his mind to compose himself to sleep.
“Good Lord!” he said, turning on his side and addressing some unseen presence representing the vexed question. “Don’t keep a man awake: settle it yourself.” And finally sank into unconsciousness in the midst of his mental struggle.
About the middle of the night he awakened. He felt that something had startled him from his sleep, but could not tell what it was. A few seconds he lay without moving, listening, and as he listened there came to his ear the sound of a horse’s feet, treading the earth restlessly outside the door, the animal itself breathing heavily as if it had been ridden hard; and almost as soon as he aroused to recognition of this fact, there came a sharp tap on the door and a man’s voice crying “Hallo!”
He knew the voice at once, and unexpected as the summons was, felt he was not altogether unprepared for it, though he could not have offered even the weakest explanation for the feeling.
“He’s in trouble,” he said, as he sat up quickly in bed. “Something’s gone wrong.” He rose and in a few seconds opened the door.
He had guessed rightly; it was the stranger. The moonlight fell full upon the side of the house and the road, and the panting horse stood revealed in a bright light which gave the man’s face a ghostly look added to his natural pallor. As he leaned forward, Tom saw that he was as much exhausted as was the animal he had ridden.
“I want to find a doctor, or a woman who can give help to another,” he said.
“There ain’t a doctor within fifteen miles from here,” began Tom. He stopped short. What he saw in the man’s face checked him.
“Look here,” he said, “is it your wife?”
The man made a sharp gesture of despair.
“She’s dying, I think,” he said, hoarsely, “and there’s not a human being near her.”
“Good Lord!” cried Tom, “Good Lord!” The sweat started out on his forehead. He remembered what Stamps had said of her youth and her pale face, and he thought of Delia Vanuxem, and from this thought sprang a sudden recollection of the deserted medical career in which he had been regarded as so ignominious a failure. He had never mentioned it since he had cut himself off from the old life, and the women for whose children he had prescribed with some success now and then had considered the ends achieved only the natural results of his multitudinous gifts. But the thought of the desolate young creature lying there alone struck deep. He listened one moment, then made his resolve.
“Go to the stable,” he said, “and throw a saddle over the horse you will find there. I know something of such matters myself, and I shall be better than nothing, with a woman’s help. I have a woman here who will follow us.”
He went into the back room and awakened Aunt Mornin.
“Get up,” he said, “and saddle the mule and follow me as soon as you can to the cabin in Blair’s Hollow. The wife of a man who lives there needs a woman
