The Bishop of Cottontown Part 39

They were more dead than alive when, at seven o'clock, the Steam Beast uttered the last volcanic howl which said they might go home.

Outside the stars were s.h.i.+ning and the cool night air struck into them with a suddenness which made them s.h.i.+ver. They were children, and so they were thoughtless and did not know the risk they ran by coming out of a warm mill, hot and exhausted, into the cool air of an Autumn night. s.h.i.+loh was so tired and sleepy that Bull Run and Seven Days had to carry her between them.

Everybody pa.s.sed out of the mill--a speechless, haggard, over-worked procession. Byrd Boyle, with a face and form which seemed to belong to a slave age, carried his twins in his arms.

Their heads lay on his shoulders. They were asleep.

Scarcely had the children eaten their supper of biscuit and bacon, augmented with dandelion salad, ere they, too, were asleep--all but s.h.i.+loh.

She could not sleep--now that she wanted to--and she lay in her grandfather's lap with flushed face and hot, over-worked heart. The strain was beginning to tell, and the old man grew uneasy, as he watched the flush on her cheeks and the unusual brightness in her eyes.

"Better give her five draps of tub'bentine an' put her to bed," said Mrs. Watts as she came by. "She'll be fittin' an' good by mornin'."

The old man did not reply--he only sang a low melody and smoothed her forehead.

It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a hearth-brick.

"What's that, Pap?" asked s.h.i.+loh half asleep.

"That's a cricket, Pet," smiled the old man.

She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:

"Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?"

There was little but machinery in her life.

Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping child in his arms:

"If I move her she'll wake," he said to himself. "Po' little s.h.i.+loh."

He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.

"The shadow of that mountain across that valley," he said, "is like the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs in life?"

He bowed his head over the sleeping s.h.i.+loh.

"Oh, G.o.d," he prayed--"You, who made the world an' said it might have a childhood--remember what it means to have it filched away.

It's like stealin' the bud from the rose-bush, the dew from the gra.s.s, hope from the heart of man. Take our manhood--O G.o.d--it is strong enough to stand it--an' it has been took from many a strong man who has died with a smile on his lips. Take our old age--O G.o.d--for it's jus' a memory of Has Beens. But let them not steal that from any life that makes all the res' of it beautiful with dreams of it. If, by some inscrutable law which we po' things can't see through, stealin' in traffic an' trade must go on in the world, O G.o.d, let them steal our purses, but not our childhood. Amen."

CHAPTER XIV

UNCLE DAVE'S WILL

The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.

"What's the matter, Archie B.?" asked the old man when he came out.

"Uncle Dave d.i.c.key is dyin' an' maw told me to run over an' tell you to hurry quick if you wanted to see the old man die."

"Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make anyway."

Ben Butler was ready by the time the children started for the mill.

Little s.h.i.+loh brought up the rear, her tiny legs bravely following the others. Archie B. looked at them curiously as the small wage-earners filed past him for work.

"Say, you little mill-birds," he said, "why don't you chaps come over to see me sometimes an' lem'me show you things outdoors that's made for boys an' girls?"

"Is they very pretty?" asked s.h.i.+loh, stopping and all ears at once.

"Oh, tell me 'bout 'em! I am jus' hungry to see 'em. I've learned the names of three birds myself an' I saw a gray squirrel onct."

"Three birds--shucks!" said Archie B., "I could sho' you forty, but I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n knowin' the birds--that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the cracker-jack trick."

s.h.i.+loh's eyes opened wide: "Why, do they lay eggs, Archie B.? Real eggs like a hen or a duck?"

Archie B. laughed: "Well, I should say so--an' away up in a tree, an'

in the funniest little baskets you ever saw. An' some of the eggs is white, an' some blue, and some green, an' some speckled an' oh, so many kind. But I'll tell you a thing right now that'll help you to remember--mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue--an' the wood-p.e.c.k.e.r's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled like his breast."

Ben Butler was. .h.i.tched to the old buggy and the Bishop drove up. He had a bunch of wild flowers for s.h.i.+loh and he gave it with a kiss.

"Run along now, Baby, an' I'll fetch you another when I come back."

They saw her run to catch up with the others and breathlessly tell them of the wonderful things Archie B. had related. And all through the day, in the dust and the lint, the thunder and rumble of the Steam Thing's war, s.h.i.+loh saw white and blue and mottled eggs, in tiny baskets, with homes up in the trees where the winds rocked the cradles when the little birds came; and young as she was, into her head there crept a thought that something was wrong in man's management of things when little birds were free and little children must work.

As she ran off she waved her hand to her grandfather.

"I'll fetch you another bunch when I come back, Pet," he called.

"You'd better fetch her somethin' to eat, instead of prayin' aroun'

with old fools that's always dyin'," called Mrs. Watts to him from the kitchen door where she was scrubbing the cans.

"The Lord will always provide, Tabitha--he has never failed me yet."

She watched him drive slowly over the hill: "That means I had better get a move on me an' go to furagin'," she said to herself.

"Hillard Watts has mistuck me for the Almighty mighty nigh all his life. It's about time the blackberries was a gittin' ripe anyway."

The Bishop found the greatest distress at Uncle Dave d.i.c.key's. Aunt Sally d.i.c.key, his wife, was weeping on the front porch, while Tilly, Uncle Dave's pretty grown daughter, her calico dress tucked up for the morning's work, showing feet and ankles that would grace a d.u.c.h.ess, was lamenting loudly on the back porch. A c.o.o.n dog of uncertain lineage and intellectual development, tuned to the howling pitch, doubtless, by the music of Tilly's sobs, joined in the chorus.

"Po' Davy is gwine--he's most gone--boo--boo-oo!" sobbed Aunt Sally.

"Pap--Pap--don't leave us," echoed Tilly from the back porch.

"Ow--wow--oo--oo," howled the dog.

The Bishop went in sad and subdued, expecting to find Uncle Davy breathing his last. Instead, he found him sitting bolt upright in bed, and sobbing even more l.u.s.tily than his wife and daughter. He stretched out his hands pitiably as his old friend went in.