第11章

There had never been such a June in Eagle County.

Usually it was a month of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty.Every morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills.Toward noon it built up great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass running through her.

Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky.Just beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of sunshine.This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her, the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture beyond.All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance.Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal.

Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there came between her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight of a man's foot in a large worn boot covered with red mud.

"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow and stretching out a warning hand.

"Don't what?" a hoarse voice asked above her head.

"Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!" she retorted, springing to her knees.The foot paused and then descended clumsily on the frail branch, and raising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered face of a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, and white arms showing through his ragged shirt.

"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" she assailed him, as he stood before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest.

He grinned."I seen you! That's what I come down for.""Down from where?" she questioned, stooping to gather up the petals his foot had scattered.

He jerked his thumb toward the heights."Been cutting down trees for Dan Targatt."Charity sank back on her heels and looked at him musingly.She was not in the least afraid of poor Liff Hyatt, though he "came from the Mountain," and some of the girls ran when they saw him.Among the more reasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort of link between the mountain and civilized folk, who occasionally came down and did a little wood cutting for a farmer when hands were short.Besides, she knew the Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himself had told her so once when she was a little girl, and had met him one day at the edge of lawyer Royall's pasture."They won't any of 'em touch you up there, f'ever you was to come up....But I don't s'pose you will," he had added philosophically, looking at her new shoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs.Royall had tied in her hair.

Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visit her birthplace.She did not care to have it known that she was of the Mountain, and was shy of being seen in talk with Liff Hyatt.But today she was not sorry to have him appear.A great many things had happened to her since the day when young Lucius Harney had entered the doors of the Hatchard Memorial, but none, perhaps, so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly finding it a convenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt.She continued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face, with feverish hollows below the cheekbones and the pale yellow eyes of a harmless animal."Iwonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with a shiver of disdain.

"Is there any folks living in the brown house by the swamp, up under Porcupine?" she presently asked in an indifferent tone.

Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise;then he scratched his head and shifted his weight from one tattered sole to the other.

"There's always the same folks in the brown house," he said with his vague grin.

"They're from up your way, ain't they?"

"Their name's the same as mine," he rejoined uncertainly.

Charity still held him with resolute eyes."See here, I want to go there some day and take a gentleman with me that's boarding with us.He's up in these parts drawing pictures."She did not offer to explain this statement.It was too far beyond Liff Hyatt's limitations for the attempt to be worth making."He wants to see the brown house, and go all over it," she pursued.

Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly through his shock of straw-colored hair."Is it a fellow from the city?" he asked.

"Yes.He draws pictures of things.He's down there now drawing the Bonner house." She pointed to a chimney just visible over the dip of the pasture below the wood.

"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously.

"Yes.You won't understand--and it don't matter.All I say is: he's going to the Hyatts' in a day or two."Liff looked more and more perplexed."Bash is ugly sometimes in the afternoons."She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's."I'm coming too: you tell him.""They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't.

What d'you want a take a stranger with you though?"I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell Bash Hyatt."He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon;then his gaze dropped to the chimney-top below the pasture.

"He's down there now?"

"Yes."