Amid the beauty of the most uncultivated and untrodden wilderness there are certain localities where the meaner and mere common processes of Nature take upon themselves a degrading likeness to the slovenly, wasteful, and improvident processes of man.The unrecorded land-slip disintegrating a whole hillside will not only lay bare the delicate framework of strata and deposit to the vulgar eye, but hurl into the valley a debris so monstrous and unlovely as to shame even the hideous ruins left by dynamite, hydraulic, or pick and shovel; an overflown and forgotten woodland torrent will leave in some remote hollow a disturbed and ungraceful chaos of inextricable logs, branches, rock, and soil that will rival the unsavory details of some wrecked or abandoned settlement.Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain natural dust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected the cast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field--the sweepings of the sylvan household.It was remarkable that Nature,so kindly considerate of mere human ruins, made no attempt to cover up or disguise these monuments of her own mortality: no grass grew over the unsightly landslides, no moss or ivy clothed the stripped and bleached skeletons of overthrown branch and tree; the dead leaves and withered husks rotted in their open grave uncrossed by vine and creeper.Even the animals, except the lower organizations,shunned those haunts of decay and ruin.
It was scarcely a hundred yards from one of those dreary receptacles that Mr. Bradley had taken leave of Miss Minty Sharpe.
The cabin occupied by her father, herself, and a younger brother stood, in fact, on the very edge of the little hollow, which was partly filled with decayed wood, leaves, and displacements of the crumbling bank, with the coal dust and ashes which Mr. Sharpe had added from his forge, that stood a few paces distant at the corner of a cross-road.The occupants of the cabin had also contributed to the hollow the refuse of their household in broken boxes,earthenware, tin cans, and cast-off clothing; and it is not improbable that the site of the cabin was chosen with reference to this convenient disposal of useless and encumbering impedimenta.
It was true that the locality offered little choice in the way of beauty.An outcrop of brown granite--a portent of higher altitudes--extended a quarter of a mile from the nearest fringe of dwarf laurel and "brush" in one direction; in the other an advanced file of Bradley's woods had suffered from some long-forgotten fire,and still raised its blackened masts and broken stumps over the scorched and arid soil, swept of older underbrush and verdure.On the other side of the road a dark ravine, tangled with briers and haunted at night by owls and wild cats, struggled wearily on, until blundering at last upon the edge of the Great Canyon, it slipped and lost itself forever in a single furrow of those mighty flanks.
When Bradley had once asked Sharpe why he had not built his house in the ravine, the blacksmith had replied: "That until the Lord had appointed his time, he reckoned to keep his head above ground and the foundations thereof."Howbeit, the ravine, or the "run," as it was locally known, was Minty's only Saturday afternoon resort for recreation or berries."It was," she had explained, "pow'ful soothin', and solitary."
She entered the house--a rude, square building of unpainted boards--containing a sitting-room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms.A glance at these rooms, which were plainly furnished, and whose canvas-colored walls were adorned with gorgeous agricultural implement circulars, patent medicine calendars, with polytinted chromos and cheaply-illuminated Scriptural texts, showed her that a certain neatness and order had been preserved during her absence; and,finding the house empty, she crossed the barren and blackened intervening space between the back door and her father's forge, and entered the open shed.The light was fading from the sky; but the glow of the forge lit up the dusty road before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledge beyond.A small curly-headed boy,bearing a singular likeness to a smudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanically blowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while her father--a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expression of countenance--was with equal want of interest mechanically hammering at a horseshoe.
Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into a querulous drawling chant of some vague religious character:
"O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
For the Lord bids you turn--ah!
O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
Why will you die?"
The musical accent adapted itself to the monotonous fall of the sledge-hammer; and at every repetition of the word "turn" he suited the action to the word by turning the horseshoe with the iron in his left hand.A slight grunt at the end of every stroke, and the simultaneous repetition of "turn" seemed to offer him amusement and relief.Minty, without speaking, crossed the shop, and administered a sound box on her brother's ear."Take that, and let me ketch you agen layin' low when my back's turned, to put on your store pants."
"The others had fetched away in the laig," said the boy, opposing a knee and elbow at acute angle to further attack.
"You jest get and change 'em," said Minty.
The sudden collapse of the bellows broke in upon the soothing refrain of Mr. Sharpe, and caused him to turn also.
"It's Minty," he said, replacing the horseshoe on the coals, and setting his powerful arms and the sledge on the anvil with an exaggerated expression of weariness.
"Yes; it's me," said Minty, "and Creation knows it's time I DID come, to keep that boy from ruinin' us with his airs and conceits."
"Did ye bring over any o' that fever mixter?"