Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company.

Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

LIPPINCOTT'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

JUNK, 1892.

JOHN" GKAY.

i.

WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES.

rT was an easy path to stumble in,—being one of those wagon-tracks

that wound mysteriously away under the dark-green forests of

Kentucky and through the pale-green thickets of tall reed-like cane,

ringed with delicate purple-blossoming pea-vine. An easy path to

stumble in,—with huge stumps to be ridden around, and the loops and

ends of roots to be avoided. And the horse was so old, so fat, so lazy,

that he liked better to stumble and take the consequences than to be at

the trouble to lift up his feet. Nor was the rider of a character and

equipment to interfere, being a small creature armed only with a switch

of wild cherry, a little hand to jerk at the bridle-reins, and a sweet

voice in which to make remonstrance. So that as for the light shower

of blows which sometimes fell upon his rounded flanks, William Penn

merely gave that comforting switch of his bob tail by which he always

expressed acquiescence in the small annoyances of his affluent mortality.

Meanwhile, of two things he felt quite sure: that it was very kind of

v^him to move along at all when he had it in his power to remain per

>J fectly still; and that as soon as he grew a little hungry—which he

S hoped might be soon—he would stop and nibble a few mouthfuls of

K^*^ the delicious greenery of the wayside, of which it seemed to him that

^ he was always full but could never get enough.

He had never tasted the Kentucky delicacy of cane garnished with

pea-vine before this spring. For many years he had been the sole gig

p horse of a weak-eyed old dentist and his wife living in Philadelphia.

ov In 1793, the doctor, greatly shrivelled and with professional fortunes

^ that decayed faster than the molars of his acquaintances, conceived the

^ enterprise of emigrating to Lexington, Kentucky; for the world was

full of rumors touching the West, and the new land was said not only

to be good for sore eyes, but to be inhabited by people who fought so

643

much that there was constant need of new front teeth. At first he and his wife, who was delicate, had thought of setting out through the wilderness with William Penn and the gig; but, yielding to better counsels, they started in a wagon-train, though not without many embraces of their bereft servitor and minute directions that he should never be allowed to see the bottom of his manger; and hardly were they settled in Lexington before they sent back for him to come out and join them.

It is discovered that he must have left Philadelphia on his journey across the Alleghany Mountains some time early in April; but it is certain that he did not turn up in Lexington until several months later; by. which time his master and mistress, having succumbed to the hardships of the journey, homesickness, and a change of life, were dead and buried, and indeed well-nigh forgotten. So that immediately upon his arrival in town, looking a good deal ashamed of himself and not a little surprised, he was dragged with violence to the common and knocked down at public sale to a Major Falconer,—price, one small mink-skin. Had William Penn known his market value, he must have been greatly mortified; for he thought extremely well of himself, after a manner of fat old creatures.

This was long ago, then,—as far back as the year 1795,—and near the middle of a sweet afternoon in May.

Far overhead vast mountain-ridges of many-peaked gleaming clouds, —those dear Alps of the blue air; outstretched far below the warm bosom of the earth, throbbing with the hope of vast maternity; two spirits abroad, everywhere shyly encountering each other and passing into one,—the pure heavenly spirit of scentless spring, born of melting snows, and the pure earthly spirit of odorous summer, born of the hearts of flowers; the road one of those wagon-tracks that were then being opened through the parklands of the Indians to the clearings of the earliest settlers, and that wound along beneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the last unworthy offspring,—oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, centuries old, gnarled, massive, drooping, majestic, through whose leafy arches the powerful sun hurled down only some solitary slanting spear of gold, and over whose gray-mossed roots some cold brook crept in silence; with here and there billowy open spaces of wild rye, buffalo grass, and clover, on which the light fell in solid sheets of soft radiance; with other spots of perpetual woodland twilight so dim that for ages no green shoot had sprung from the deep black vegetable mould; blown softly to and fro across this pathway, cool pungent odors of ivy, pennyroyal, and mint, mingled with the warmer fragrance of wild grape; flitting to and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the topmost branches of the sycamores, unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which, like the paroquet, are now long since vanished:—a primeval woodland avenue, down which the mother of mankind might fitly have walked for the adornment of her beauty as through a glade of Eden.

But, instead of the fabled mother, down it now there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob-tail horse, his polished coat shining like silver when he crossed an expanse of sunlight, fading into spectral pallor when he passed under the twilight of the rayless trees; his bushy fbretop floating like a snowy plume in the light wind; his unshod feet, half covered by the long thick fetlocks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy earth; the rims of his nostrils expanding like flexible ebony; and in his filmy eyes that look of peace which is never seen in any but those of petted animals.

On his head he wore an old bridle with heavy knots of wild blue violets tied at his ears; on his broad back was spread an immense blanket of buffalo-skin; on this rested a worn black side-saddle with a blue girth,—newly bought, for William Penn was hard on girths,— and sitting.in the saddle was a young girl, whom many a young Virginian of the town to his sorrow knew to be Amy Falconer, and whom many a lonely old pioneer dreamed of as he fell asleep between his rifle and his hunting-knife in some snow-wrapt cabin of the wilderness. Amy Falconer! The one beautiful woman that had thus far been seen in Kentucky, and the first of the famous, innumerable train of those illustrious ones who for a hundred years since have wrecked or saved the destinies of the men.

The skirt of her pink calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty to her—so very pretty—that she had not been able to bear the thought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained riding-habit; and it was so short and narrow that it showed, resting against the saddle, her little feet loosely fitted into new bronze morocco shoes. On her hands she had drawn white half-hand mittens of home-knit; and on her head she wore an enormous white scoop bonnet, lined with pink and tied under her chin in a huge white muslin bow. Her face, hidden away under the pink and white half-shadow of this circulating tunnel, showed such tints of pearl and rose that it seemed carved from the inner surface of a sea-shell. Her eyes were a cold gray, almond-shaped, rather wide apart, with an expression changeful and playful, but withal rather shrewd and hard; her light-brown hair, as fine as unspun silk, was parted over her brow and drawn severely back behind her opalescent toys of ears; and the lips of her little mouth curved and rested against each other as fresh and velvet-like as two half-opened rose-leaves.

Thus on she rode down that avenue of the primeval woods; and nature seemed arranged to salute her passing as for that of some lovely imperial presence: the soft waving' of a hundred green boughs above her and on each side; the hundred floating odors that are the great mother's breath of love; the flash and rush of bright wings; the swift play of nimble forms up and down the boles of trees; and all the sweet confusion of innumerable melodies.

Then happened one of those trifles that contain the history of our lives, as a drop of dew on the edge of a leaf draws into itself the majesty and solemnity of the heavens.

From the right pommel of the side-saddle there dangled a heavy roll of homespun linen, which she was taking to town to her aunt s grocer in exchange for queensware pitchers; and behind this roll of linen, fastened to a brass ring under the seat of the saddle, was swung a bundle tied up in a large blue-and-white checked cotton handkerchief. Whenever she fidgeted in the saddle, or whenever the horse stumbled, the string by which this bundle was tied slipped a little through the knot and the bundle hung a little lower down. Just where the wagontrail passed out into the broader public road leading to Lexington from Frankfort and the travelling began to be really good, the horse brought one of his lazy forefeet against the loop of a pliant root, was thrown forward in a blurred heap of white, and the bundle slipped from the saddle noiselessly to the soft earth.

She did not see it. She merely gathered the reins more tightly in one hand, pushed back her bonnet which now hung down over her eyes like the bill of a Mediterranean pelican, and applied the switch to the horse's flank with such determined vehemence that a gadfly which was about to alight on that favored spot actually went to the other side.

And so out of the lengthening shadows of the woods they passed on toward the little town; and far behind them in the public road lay the lost bundle.

II.

A DBESS ON THE WALL.

In the open square on Cheapside in Lexington there is a bronze statue of John Breckinridge. Not far from this spot a hundred years ago the pioneers had built the first log school-house of the town.

Poor old school-house, long since become scattered ashes! Poor little backwoods academicians, driven in about sunrise, driven out toward dusk! Poor little tired backs with nothing to lean against I Poor little bare feet that could never reach the floor! Poor little droop-headed figures, so sleepy, so afraid to fall asleep! Long, long since, little children of the past, those backs have become straight enough, measured on a cool bed; sooner or later your bare feet, wherever wandering, have come to rest on the soft earth; and all your drooping heads have found the same dreamless pillow to sleep on, and there still are sleeping. And the imperious school-master, too, who seemed exempt from physical frailty,—the young school-master who guarded as a stern sentinel that lonely outpost of the imperilled alphabet,—even he long ago laid himself down on the same mortal level with you as a common brother. But is there not a tale of him and the first beautiful woman of the town that will have a meaning as long as the heart beats?

John Gray, the school-master! At four o'clock that afternoon he was standing on the hickory block which formed the door-step, having just closed the door behind him for the day. Down at his side between the thumb and forefinger of one hand hung his great black hat, which was decorated with a tricolored cockade, to show that he was a member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, modelled after the Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the Jacobin Clubs of France. In the open palm of the other lay his big silver English lever watch with glass case and broad black silk fob.

A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply but with gentlemanly care a suit of black, which was relieved around his wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality. In