The Night Riders

The early morning sunlight entered boldly through the small panes of glass into the kitchen of the toll-house and fell in a checkered band across the breakfast table set against the sill of the one long, low window.

The meal was a simple one, plainly served, but a touch of gold and purple-royal colors of the season-was given it by a bunch of autumn flowers, golden-rod and wild aster, stuck in a glass jar set on the window sill.

A glance at the two seated at each end of the narrow table would have enabled one to decide quickly to whom was due this desire for ornamentation, for the mother was a sharp-featured, rather untidy-looking woman, on whom the burden of hard work and poverty had laid certain harsh lines not easily eradicated, while the daughter's youth and comeliness had overcome them as a fine jewel may assert its beauty despite a cheap setting.

The sun's lambent rays, falling across the girl's shapely head and shoulders, touched to deeper richness the auburn hair, gathered in a large, loose coil, that rested low upon her neck, and also accentuated the clear, delicately-tinted complexion like a semi-transparency that is given rare old china when the light illumines it.

The meal was eaten almost in silence, but toward the end of the breakfast Mrs. Brown looked up suddenly, her cup of coffee raised partly to her lips, and said, in her querulous treble:

"Sally, Foster Crain says aigs air fetchin' fo'hteen an' a half cents in town. Count what's stored away in the big gourd, when you git through eatin', an' take 'em in this mornin'."

"How am I to go?" asked her daughter, looking up from her plate. "Joe's limping from that nail he picked up yesterday."

"Likely somebody'll be passin' the gate that'll give you a seat. The Squire may be along soon." A certain inflection crept into the speaker's voice.

"I'll walk," announced Sally, with sudden determination. "It's cool and pleasant, and I'd as soon walk as ride."

The mother looked across furtively to where her daughter sat.

"I don't see what makes you so set ag'in the Squire," she said, plaintively, a few moments later, as if she had divined her daughter's unuttered thoughts.

"He's an old fool!" declared Sally, promptly.

"An' it strikes me that you're somethin' of a young one!" retorted her mother sharply.

The girl made no answer, save a perceptible shrug of her pretty shoulders, and soon afterward got up and began to clear away the breakfast dishes. Mrs. Brown sighed deeply.

"Most girls would be powerful vain to have the Squire even notice 'em," the mother continued, in a more persuasive tone, as a sort of balm offering to the girl's wounded feelings. She placed her cup and saucer in her plate and put back a small piece of unused butter on the side of the butter dish, then slowly arose from the table.

"It's seldom a po' gyurl has such a good chance to better her condition, if she was only willin' to do so," she continued argumentatively, for the subject was a favorite theme with her, and she had rung its changes for the listener's benefit on more than one occasion. She gave her daughter a sidelong glance-partly of inquiry, partly of reproach-and turned to her work.

Sally, with something like an impatient jerk, lifted from the stove the steaming kettle and poured a part of the hot contents into the dish-pan on the table, but she made no answer, though soon the clatter of tins and dishes-perhaps they rattled a little louder than usual-mingled as a sort of accompaniment to the reminiscent monologue that Mrs. Brown carried on at intervals during her work.

"It's all owin' to the Squire's kindness an' interest in us that we're fixed this comfortable, for, dear knows I'd never got the toll-gate in the first place if it hadn't been for his influence, an' now, if you'd only give him any encouragement at all, you might be a grand sight better off. Such chances don't grow as thick as blackberries in summer, I can tell you."

The dishes and tins rattled angrily, but Sally said not a word.

"About the only good showin' a poor gyurl has in this world is to marry as well as she can, an' when she neglects to do this, she's got nobody to blame but herself-not a soul."

Sally had the dishes all washed and laid in a row on the table to drain, and now she caught them up, one by one, and began to polish away vigorously, as if the effort afforded a certain relief to her feelings, since she had chosen to take refuge in silence.

"S'posin' he is old an' ugly," soliloquized Mrs. Brown, abruptly breaking into speech again, and seemingly addressing her remarks to the skillet she was then cleaning, and which she held up before her and gazed into intently, as a lady of fashion might do a hand glass at her toilet. "What o' that? Beauty's only skin deep, an' old age is likely to come to us all sooner or later. It's all the better if he is along in years," she added, with a sudden chuckle and a second furtive glance over the top of the skillet toward the girl, to see if she was listening. "Then he ain't so likely to live forever, an' a trim young widow, with property of her own an' money in bank, can mighty soon find a chance to marry ag'in, if she's a mind to."

A cloud of anger swept over the listener's face, which the mother failed to see, as the skillet again intervened.

"There ain't nothin' like havin' a home of your own, an' knowin' you've got a shelter for your old age-no, indeed, they ain't! The Squire's mighty well fixed; he's got a real good farm, an' turnpike stock, an' cash, an' a nice, comfortable house besides."

"Comfortable!" exclaimed Sally, with a toss of her head, and breaking her resolve to keep silent. "It looks like a ha'nted barn stuck back amongst them cedar trees down in the hollow. No wonder his first wife went crazy an' hung herself up in the attic, poor thing! They say he treated her shameful mean."

Sally had looked upon this house many times and with conflicting thoughts as she passed it now and then. An air of neglect and loneliness hung about the spot. The house, hopelessly ugly and angular, was set far back from the road in the midst of a large yard given over to weeds and untrimmed shrubbery, while a clump of gloomy-looking cedars defied even the brightness of sun and sky.

"You can't put credit into everything you hear," admonished Mrs. Brown, breaking ruthlessly into her daughter's musings. "Besides, a spry young girl can pretty much have her own way when she marries a man so much older than herself.

"There's Serena Lowe, that use' to be," she continued, reminiscently. "She an' her fam'ly was about as poor as Job's turkey when we went to school together, an' many's the time I've divided my dinner with her because she didn't seem to have any too much of her own.

"But she had a downright pretty face-all white an' pink, like a doll's-an' it helped her to ketch old Bartholomew Rice, an' now she rides around in her own kerridge an' pair, mind you, an' no prouder woman ever lived this minute. You'd think from the airs she gives herself that she was born in the best front room on a Sunday.

"The Squire's as good as hinted to me that if he could marry the one he wants, he wouldn't in the least mind goin' to the expense of paintin' an' fixin' up the place till you wouldn't know it," insinuated Mrs. Brown, dropping her voice to a more confidential tone.

"He'd have to paint an' fix hisself up, too, till you wouldn't know him, either, before I'd even so much as look at him," tartly asserted Sally.

"A tidy young wife could change his looks an' the looks of the house in a mighty little while, if she only had a mind to do so," suggested Mrs. Brown, in subtly persuasive tones. "It must be dreadful lonesome livin' as he does, with nobody to look after things."

"He might have kept his nephew for company," insisted Sally, with a sudden ring of resentment in her voice. "He drove him away."

"Which likely he wouldn't have done if Milt hadn't been so headstrong an' wild. You know the Squire's goin' to have his own way about things."

"About some things," corrected Sally.

"Mebbe about all, sooner or later," said Mrs. Brown, in hopeful prediction. "He ain't a man to give up easy when he sets his mind in a certain direction."

"Perhaps his nephew isn't, either," suggested her daughter, with a little tinge of color deepening in each cheek.

"No, an' that's just the cause an' upshot of the whole trouble!" cried the mother, in a sudden flash of vehemence, dropping the persuasive tones she had heretofore employed for resentful chiding. "His nephew's at the bottom of it all, an' you seem ready an' willin' to throw away a good chance of a nice, comfortable home an' deprive me of a shelter in my old age just for the sake of that no-account Milt Derr, who happens to have smooth ways an' a nimble tongue. It looks like he's fairly bewitched you."

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