Other Main-Travelled Roads. Garland Hamlin
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that was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst through the door.
"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break—" She saw a look on his face that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.
"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long as he lives."
The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.
"But how do you come back t' me?"
The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.
"I come back the wife of a man, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.
"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t' school, bought ye dresses—done everythin' fer ye I could, 'lowin' t' have ye stand by me when I got old—but no, ye must go back on yer ol' pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy knows anything about—a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the world—"
"What did you do for mother that she left her father and mother and went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians? I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git—when Lime comes and asks for me?"
The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John Jennings and the tearful eyes of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with Lyman. But his heart hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and stepped forward.
"Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come, now, what d' y' say?"
There was something winning in the sturdy bearing of the man as he stood before the father, who remained silent and grim.
"Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms. Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded about this thing—"
"That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed. "You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood; they were married in my house—I thought that would be best. You can't live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my boy. You'd better—"
The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.
"Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country through as a peacemaker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an' you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house 'll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a long time to feel sorry in."
The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted, quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then he burst forth:—
"Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat—breakfus 'r dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' round about hyere in seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"
And they all shouted in laughter, while the old man strode unsteadily but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was still laughing—but silently.
ELDER PILL, PREACHER
I
Old man Bacon was pinching forked barbs on a wire fence one rainy day in July, when his neighbor Jennings came along the road on his way to town. Jennings never went to town except when it rained too hard to work outdoors, his neighbors said; and of old man Bacon it was said he never rested nights nor Sundays.
Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."
"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.
"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"
"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon, discouragingly.
"Heard about the plan for a church?"
"Naw."
"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and preach every Sunday afternoon at the schoolhouse, an' we want help t' pay him—the laborer is worthy of his hire."
"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."
"Oh, yes, you have—besides, y'r sister—"
"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a vicious grip.
Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.
"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with his work. Bacon was what is called land poor in the West, that is, he had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed. It remains to say that he was not disposed, being a sceptic and a scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he would help.
The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking: on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:—
"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"
"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.
"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in a perfunctory way.
"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.
"I am, just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted wire better?"
"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."
"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad the way that leads—how's your soul anyway, brother?"
"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n."
"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust corrupt