Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Emily Compton and Distributed
Proofreaders
by Frederick LandisAuthor of "The Glory of His Country"
1910
[Illustration: Those who passed by night were grateful for the lamp]
It was a handful of people in the country—a simple-hearted handful.There was no railroad—only a stage which creaked throughthe gullies and was late. Once it had a hot-box, and the place driftedthrough space, a vagrant atom.
Time swung on a lazy hinge. Children came; young folks married;old ones died; Indian Creek overflowed the bottom-land; crops failed;one by one the stage bore boys and girls away to seek their fortunes inthe far-off world; at long intervals some tragedy streaked the yellowclay monotony with red; January blew petals from her silver garden;April poured her vase of life; August crawled her snail length; yearspassed, leaving rusty streaks back to a dull horizon.
The sky seemed higher than anywhere else; clouds hurried over thisplace called "Cold Friday."
A mile to the east was "Lonesome Hill." Indians once built signalfires upon it, and in this later time travellers alighted as their horsesstruggled up the steep approach. At the top was a cabin; it waswhitewashed, and so were the apple-trees round it. A gourd vine clungto its chimney; pigeons fluttered upon its shingles, and June flung acrimson rose mantle over its side and half-way up the roof.
One wished to stop and rest beneath its weeping willow by thewhite stone milk house.
Those who passed by day were accustomed to a woman's face at thewindow—a calm face which looked on life as evening looks on day—sucha face as one might use to decorate a fancy of the old frontier. Thosewho passed by night were grateful for the lamp which protested againstNature's apparent consecration of the place to solitude.
This home held aloof from "Cold Friday"; many times Curiosity wentin, but Conjecture alone came out, for through the years the man andwoman of this cabin merely said, "We came from back yonder." Nobodyknew where "yonder" was.
But the law of compensation was in force—even in "Cold Friday."With acquaintanceships as with books, the ecstasy of cutting leavesis not always sustained in the reading, and the silence of this man andwoman was the life of village wonder.
It gave "Friday's" chimney talk a spice it otherwise had never known;the back log seldom crumbled into ashes till the bones of these cabindwellers lay bleaching on the plains of "Perhaps."
John Dale was seventy-five years or more, but worked his niggard hillsideall the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; theflowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden.She seemed to know when neighbors were ill; hers was the dignity of beingindispensable. Many the mother of that region who, standing beneathsome cloud, thanked God as this slender, white-haired soul with starshine in her face, hurried over the fields with an old volume pasted fullof quaint remedies.
She made a call of another kind—just once—when the "Hitchenses"brought the first organ to "Cold Friday."
She remained only long enough to go straight to the cabinet, which theassembled neighbors regarded with distant awe, and play several pieces"without the book." On her leaving with the same quiet indifference, Mrs.Ephraim Fivecoats peered owlishly toward Mrs. Rome Lukens and renderedthe following upon her favorite in