The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous, and the red fire glared in the night.
The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge; Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.
“Don’t throw the dirt too high there,” she begged; “it’ll bring my seat too near the earth.”
He looked up.
“Why, it’s a throne,” he laughed.
“It needs a roof,” he whimsically told her when his day’s work was done. Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it snugly from wind and water.
Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding footrests to make the climbing easy, peepholes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau’s Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in—there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his presence, and she inquired softly:
“Who’s it, Bles?”
“The mother of God,” he answered reverently.
“And why does she hold a lily?”
“It stands for purity—she was a good woman.”
“With a baby,” Zora added slowly.
“Yes—” said Bles, and then more quickly—“It is the Christ Child—God’s baby.”
“God is the father of all the little babies, ain’t He, Bles?”
“Why, yes—yes, of course; only this little baby didn’t have any other father.”
“Yes, I know one like that,” she said—and then she added softly: “Poor little Christ-baby.”
Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying:
“How white she is; she’s as white as the lily, Bles; but—I’m sorry she’s white—Bles, what’s purity—just whiteness?”
Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her innocence something holy.
“It means,” he stammered, groping for meanings—“it means being good—just as good as a woman knows how.”
She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly:
“Not better—not better than she knows, but just as good, in—lying and stealing and—and everything?”
Bles smiled.
“No—not better than she knows, but just as good.”
She trembled happily.
“I’m—pure,” she said, with a strange little breaking voice and gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.
“Of course you are,” he whispered tenderly, hiding her little hands in his.
“I—I was so afraid—sometimes—that I wasn’t,” she whispered, lifting up to him her eyes streaming with tears. Silently he kissed her lips.
From that day on they walked together in a new world. No revealing word was spoken; no vows were given, none asked for; but a new bond held them. She grew older, quieter, taller, he humbler, more tender and reverent, as they toiled together.
So the days passed. The sun burned in the heavens; but the silvered glory of the moon grew fainter and fainter and each night it rose later than the night before. Then one day Zora whispered:
“Tonight!”
Bles came to the cabin, and he and Zora and Elspeth sat silently around the fireplace with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still; only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long they sat, until the silence crept into Bles’s flesh, and stretching out his hand, he touched Zora’s, clasping it.
After a time the old woman rose and hobbled to a big black chest. Out of it she brought an old bag of cotton seed—not the white-green seed which Bles had always known, but small, smooth black seeds, which she handled carefully, dipping her hands deep down and letting them drop through her gnarled fingers. And so again they sat and waited and waited, saying no word.
Not until the stars of midnight had swung to the zenith did they start down through the swamp. Bles sought to guide the old woman, but he found she knew the way better than he did. Her shadowy figure darting in and out among the trunks till they crossed the tree bridge, moved ever noiselessly ahead.
She motioned the boy and girl away to the thicket at the edge, and stood still and black in the midst of the cleared island. Bles slipped his arm protectingly around Zora, glancing fearfully about in the darkness. Slowly a great cry rose and swept the island. It struck madly and sharply, and then died away to uneasy murmuring. From afar there seemed to come the echo or the answer to the call. The form of Elspeth blurred the night dimly far off, almost disappearing, and then growing blacker and larger. They heard the whispering swish-swish of falling seed; they felt the heavy tread of a great coming body. The form of the old woman suddenly loomed black above them, hovering a moment formless and vast then fading again away, and the swish-swish of the falling seed alone rose in the silence of the night.
At last all was still. A long silence. Then again the air seemed suddenly filled with that great and awful cry; its echoing answer screamed afar and they heard the raucous voice of Elspeth beating in their ears:
“De seed done sowed! De seed done sowed!”
X
Mr. Taylor Calls
“Thinking the matter over,” said Harry Cresswell to his father, “I’m inclined to advise drawing this Taylor out a little further.”
The Colonel puffed his cigar and one eye twinkled, the lid of the other being at
