Rose of Old Harpeth

ght the day over the head of Old Harpeth down upon little Sweetbriar

tall hollyhocks along the garden fence, flaunted the long spikes of jack-beans and carried their quaint fragrance to pour it over the bed of sober-colored mignonette, mixing it with the pungent zinnia odor and flinging it all over into the clover field across the

generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a cinder state while she tied it up in camphor for him. In the night a mosquito had taken a bite out of the end of Jennie's small nose and it was swelled to twice its natural size, and Peter, the wise, barke

er had insisted on moving Mr. Crabtree and all his effects over into the domici

n't be unmarried in your house only through Saturday and Sunday. I'm a-going to pack up his Sunday clothes, a pair of clean socks, a shirt and other things in this basket. Then I'll fix him up a shake-down in my parlor to spend Saturday night in, and I'll dress him up nice and fine for the wed

or Rose Mary and them sweet old folks, even to gettin' my house into a unseemly married co

r own things. Mr. Satterwhite always kept his clothes so it were a pleasure to look at 'em, but Cal Rucker prefers a pair of socks separated across the house if he can get them there. I found one of his undershirts ful

to a blue bundle on her breast that she had been administering as a continuous performance to young Tucker since daylight. "I'm sorry I couldn't co

d down here with Mrs. Plunkett we can get to work on his house right aft

y has gone down to the dairy to pack up the last batch of butter for Mr. Crabtree to take to the city in the morning. Mr. Tucker's st

akened with as bad a spell of rheumatism as she had had for a year and it was with the greatest difficulty that Rose Mary had succeeded in rubbing down the pain to a state where she could be propped up in bed to direct l

were, in the midst of the excitement of Mr. Crabtree's change of residence. In all their young lives of varied length they had never before had an opportunity to witness the upheaval of a moving and this occasi

unt Viney in a stern voice. "Put 'em in the basket right side up, for they wer

different baskets for you, and if this one don't do all right, can't me and

ia, which order was carried out faithfully by the General, with a generous disregard of the

mandy wandered over by the window, along which stood a row of tomato cans into which were stuck slips of all the vines and plants on the land of the Briars, ready for transportation across Providence Road when the time came. There was something so intensely pathetic in this

," he said as he sidled up close to her and put his arm around her with a protect

with a sympathy equal to and a courage

es holding up its leaves, Amandy?" asked

ed Miss Amandy, bending over t

that my grave shift has got nothing but a seemly stitched band on it while you would have linen lace on yours. And don't let anything get wrinkled.

owl of soup, and Miss Lavinia lay back on her pillows weakly, with the fire all go

fore she could take another sip. And with the last spoonful she looked up and whispered to Rose Mary, "You'll have to do the rest child, I

e Road to the scene of mop and broom action behind the store, and Uncle Tucker stiffly mounted old Gray to drive the cows away to their separate homes. The thrifty neighbors had been glad to b

ss of despair rose in her heart. Against the uprooting of their feebleness her whole nature cried out, and the sacrifice that had been offered her in the milk-house days before, seemed but a small price to pay to avert the tragedy. Doubt of herself and her motives assailed her, and she quivered in every nerve when she thought that thus she had failed them. What! Was she to save hersel

st sinking, lit by the glow of the fast-setting sun. The wind had died down and a deep peace was settling over the Valley, like a benediction from the c

before him, and before the last soft rays of the sun had ent

e usual chapters of retiring service that Miss Lavinia always required of her, and so Rose Mary drew the candle close beside the bed and attempted to go on with her rubbing and read at the same time. And though, if read she must, the very soul of Rose Mary panted for the comfort of some of the lines of the Sweet Singer, Aunt Vin

would be but a good thing for us. Lay the Bible in that newspaper on top of that pile of Christian Advocates, with a string to tie 'em all up af

s comforting him, and for a moment in her own room she bent over the little cot where the General and his two spotted servitors lay curled up in a tangle and fast in the depths of sleep. Then she opened wide t

of resolve she went into the house, lighted a candle by the old desk in the hall, and wrote swiftly a few words of desperate summons to the Senator. She knew that Frid

she ran fleetly down to the front gate and called to him. He consented instantly to ride over and deliver the

Rose Mary?" he asked an

and as he got on his horse and rode away she came slowly up the long front walk that was moon

were just about to dash over her head as she stretched out one arm to the hills and with a broken cry bent her white forehead in the curve of the other, but suddenly bent head, tear-blinded eyes, quivering b

e out of you, Rose Mary Alloway,"

Rose of Old Harpeth melted into just a tender girl who crushed her heart against her lover's and clung as meekly as any slip of vine to her young lord oak. "But I don

most waist-high against Everett's side in a perfect ecstasy of welcome. They yelped and barked and whined and nosed in a tumbling heap of palp

tern call from the depths of Miss Lavinia's room, the door of which Rose Mary had left ajar,

With one glance his keen eyes took in the situation in the dim room in which the two old wayfarers lay prepared for the morning journey, and what Miss Lavinia's stately and proper greeting would have been to him none

all fixed up over at Boliver this afternoon. There's worse than oil on the place-and it's all yours now for keeps." With Rose Mary in his arms Everett had entirely forgotten to announce to her such a minor fact as the saving of her lands and estate, but to the two littl

ppeared in the doorway. His long-tailed night-shirt flapped around his bare, thin old legs, and every

m across the light of his candle. "Have any kind of cyclone blo

me-faced head of hers out of that feather pillow. It's all on account of that tored place in her night-cap I told her to mend. You needn't neither of you come back no more, because we must get to sleep, so as to be ready to unpack before sun-up and get settled back for the day. And don't you go to b

is bed, lighting the old cob with trembling fingers but with his excitement well under control. He listened intently to Everett's hurried but succinct account of the

on his high-piled feather pillows and blinked out into the candle-light, puffed in silence for a few minut

for a man to ketch by putting salt on. Gid failed both with a knife in the back and a salt shaker to ketch it, but you were

Mr. Alloway?" asked Everett with a rad

a man has plowed a honest, straight-furrowed field in life it's no more'n fair for Providence to send a-loving, trusting woman to mee

itting in the soft light, but a lusty young snore from a dark room on the left made him remember that there was one greeting he had missed. He bent over the General's little cot, across which lay a long shaft of the white light from the hilltops, and was about to press his

se be broked," murmured Stonie as he turned on his

d," answered Everett under his breath as he turned away and left th

nd smiled down upon him, "for a woman, you have very little curiosity. Don't you want to ask me where I've been, why I went and what I've

, ought it? Now tell me what brought you back-to save me," and Rose Mary held out her hand, with one of her lovely, entreating gestures, while her eyes wer

it was signed 'Bob.' All these weeks a bunch of hard old goldbugs had been sitting in conclave, weighing my evidence and reports and making one inadequate syndicating offer after another. They were teetering he

enough daylight into my proposition to dazzle the whole conclave into setting signatures to papers they'd bee

or Sweetbriar. I met Bob out about a mile from town, and he put me next to the whole situation and gave me your note. I don't know which I came nearest to, swearing or crying, but the Plunkett

she had gone through. "I thought you were out of work yourself and couldn't help us, and I didn

would unconsciously let him get a hint of the find, and I knew he could and would foreclose any minute. He was suspicious of me and my prospecting, anyway, and as he was an old, and as you both thought, tested friend, what way did I have of proving him the slob I knew him to be? I thought it be

ppened. I thought I ought to-to save them, even if Uncle Tucker wouldn't let me, and I gave Bob that note-to-to him. It almost h

ever leave

have been the loot; but down here in Harpeth Valley they grow men like your Uncle Tucker, and they turn, by a strange motive pow

y, quickly raising her head and smiling through her tears at him. "Go on and tell

l hollow. I came on it almost accidentally while testing for the allied metals up the creek. Your money will grow in bunches now, for the

rous, breathless shyness, and she held out her hand to him with the most lovely of all her little gestures

persuaded into matrimony by heiress, but I'm going to take my own and buckle down and see that you people get every cent of that dig-up that's coming to you. With the reputation

the nesties?" she asked with the dove stars deep in the pools o

, looking deep into the eyes raised to his, "Truly, rose woman, am I that beggar-man who came over the Ridge, cold, and in the

ade for you of your-Father's l

E