University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

PATTY had that morning gone to the spring-house,
as usual, to strain the milk.

Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not
know what a spring-house is? A little log cabin six
feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where
the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold
from beneath the hill. The little cabin-like spring-house
sits always in the hollow; as you approach it
you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which
Western people call “clapboards,” you see the green
moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see
the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs
that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and
open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges,
you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly
from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear
cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and
in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the presence
of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues
of poetry which you can never turn into words.

It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden
had hidden herself.

She brought clean crocks—earthenware milk pans
—from the shelf outside, where they had been airing
to keep them sweet; she held the strainer in her left

hand and poured the milk through it until each crock
was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places
among the stones, so that they stood half immersed in
the cold current of spring water; she laid the smooth
pine cover on each crock, and put a clean stone atop
that to secure it.

While she was thus putting away the milk her
mind was on Morton. She wondered what her father
had said to him yesterday. In the heart of her heart
she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry
him in the face of her father's displeasure. She
had never rebelled against the iron rule, but she felt
herself full of power and full of endurance. She could
go off into the wilderness with Morton; they would
build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with
puncheon floor and stick chimney; they would sleep,
like other poor settlers, on beds of dry leaves, and they
would subsist upon the food which Morton's unerring
rifle would bring them from the forest. These were
the humble cabin castles she was building. All girls
weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight
wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and
brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy,
but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat
to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out
of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked
her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great
fire-place. I know it sounds old-fashioned and sentimental
in me to say so, and yet how can it matter to
a heart like Patty's what may be the scenery on the
tapestry, if love be the warp and faith the woof?

[ILLUSTRATION]

PATTY IN THE SPRINGHOUSE.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 096. In-line engraving of a woman in a small wooden structre; a boy in a cap approaches in the background.]

Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring
to plan his own and Patty's partnership future,
but he drew a more cheerful picture than she did,
for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain
Lumsden's displeasure. He was at the moment going
to meet the
Captain, walking
down the foot-path
through the woods,
kicking the dry
beech leaves into
billows before him
and singing a Scotch love - song of Burns's which he
had learned from his mother.

He planned one future, she another; and in after
years they might have laughed to think how far wrong
were both guesses. The path which Morton followed
led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on the
stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone
voice as he approached, singing tender words that
made her heart stand still:

And as he came right by the spring-house, he
sang, now in a lower tone lest he should be heard at
the house, but still more earnestly, and so audibly
that the listening Patty could hear every word, the
last stanza:

And even as she listened to the last line, Morton
had discovered that the spring-house door was ajar,
and turned, shading his eyes, to see if perchance Patty
might not be within. He saw her and reached out
his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed
to the imperfect light did not see how
full of blushes was her face—for she feared that he
might guess all that she had just been dreaming. But
she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness
than she would have shown had it not been for
the displeasure which she supposed her father had

manifested. And so she covered the last crock and
came and stood by him at the door of the spring-house,
and he talked right on in the tender strain of
his song. And she did not protest, but answered
back timidly and almost as warmly.

And that is how little negro Bob at last found
Patty at the spring-house and found Morton with her.
“Law's sake! Miss Patty, done look for ye mos' everywhah.
Yer paw wants ye.” And with that Bob
rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips
into a broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.