duncan polite's valley was slowly disappearing in the shadows of evening when he stepped from his gate and somewhat hesitatingly turned down into its purple depths. he was experiencing a strange, almost uncanny feeling, for, not only was he going to church alone, but he was actually on his way to worship with the methodists! he had a vague fear that he must be doing wrong. but indeed, he was going merely in the hope that he might hear some comforting words from the methodist minister; and duncan was sadly in need of comfort.
in the long months since mr. cameron's death, his days had been filled with anxiety and fear for his covenant. when the first sharpness of grief at the loss of his old friend had passed, the watchman slowly awakened to the knowledge that he was living among a strange people. under mr. cameron's wise, loving rule all classes in the congregation had been unanimous; the elder folk believed him perfect and the younger respected him too deeply to disagree with him. but when the bond of union was severed, a new party with alarmingly progressive ideas, suddenly came to life. they were fain to introduce many improvements into the church service which the fathers of the sanctuary considered unsound and irreverent. they wanted a choir and an organ like the methodists; they desired to sing hymns as did their sister congregation over on the tenth; and, most of all, they considered it imperative that they should stand to sing and sit to pray, as did all respectable people.
andrew johnstone, who represented the old school and its traditions, stood at the head of the ancient party as immovable as the church foundations. some of the elders might counsel yielding, or at least compromising, but not splinterin' andra. he regarded all these youthful aspirations as signs of the degeneracy of the times and a decay of spiritual life and, therefore, to be immediately quenched.
so the two parties stood arrayed against each other and the chief cause of their dissension was the choice of a new minister. the more youthful party wanted a young man, or at least one who was "lively," while old glenoro held to its ideal—a man as much as possible like hector cameron, or, if it were not looking for too much on this earth, a second john mcalpine. but the young people of the congregation had never heard mr. mcalpine preach, and, like the egyptians, who did not know joseph, they had not the proper respect for that great leader, and they also considered gaelic sermons, two-hour discourses and half-hour prayers as belonging to a past generation.
all these trials, youthful frivolity, the lack of a gaelic service and old andrew johnstone's storms, duncan polite had borne patiently; but to-day's sermon had been almost too much for even his optimism, for that morning a smart probationer had stood up in mr. cameron's sacred pulpit and delivered a twenty-minute address on the beauties of nature! even the young people had been shocked, and andrew johnstone had, for once, voiced the sentiments of the whole congregation as he gave his opinion of the young man to duncan polite on their homeward walk. "it's a guid thing maister cameron's gone till his rest," he remarked sombrely. "if he'd a lived to see his pulpit filled by a bit buddie that couldna' hang on till his taxt for half an' 'oor, he'd never a held up his heid again!"
and so duncan had been driven to the extremity of seeking comfort in the methodist church and was on his way thither, in some doubt as to the wisdom of such a strange proceeding, and in much fear that andrew would disapprove.
the methodist church was a substantial brick building, set picturesquely on the slope of the northern hill. duncan went hesitatingly in and took a seat near the door. he found it quite a roomy place and well filled. there was much more ornamentation here than in his own place of worship; the walls were papered, the pulpit platform was covered with a gay carpet, two shining brass chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling, the windows were frosted glass with a row of lurid blue and red panes around each, and behind the minister was the centre of attraction and cynosure of all eyes, the choir and the organ.
duncan felt a return of his misgivings when he recognised many members of his own church in that institution; for, such was the chaos of these new times that the methodist services were attended regularly by nearly all the young presbyterians. and, indeed, matters had come to such a pitch that the choir was conducted by no less a person than young andrew johnstone himself, much to the wrath and shame of his pious father.
that choir was at once the delight and torment of its members. the hopes and fears, the triumphs and despairs that surged within the little railing, would have been sufficient to swamp the congregation, could they have broken loose. but the enjoyment outweighed the pain; there was choir practise once a week and sometimes they were invited to furnish the music at a neighbouring tea-meeting and both these were unmixed joys. then, too, they were permitted to sing quite alone at the regular church services, while the collection was being taken up; and sometimes they even ventured to sing an anthem, though the evening they sang one with a tenor solo by sylvanus todd, they were considered to have gone a little too far, by even the most liberal minded, and the offence was not repeated until more enlightened times.
mr. ansdell, the methodist minister, was a benign old gentleman with an angelic face and a heart to match. he noted the mingling of the different religious sects in glenoro with humble joy, and regarded the fact that a presbyterian elder's son should lead the singing in the methodist church as a mark of the broad and kindly spirit of the age and one of the potent signs of the millennium.
he was just the sort of man to appeal to duncan polite's heart. his sermon was like himself, gentle, loving and overflowing with goodwill to all men. duncan sat and drank it in with deepest joy; surely his covenant was in no great danger with such a man as mr. ansdell in his glen!
thereafter, in spite of old andrew's opposition, he could not resist the pleasure of an occasional sabbath evening service. he did not always have the privilege of listening to his new friend, however. mr. ansdell had another field and preached only on alternate sabbaths in his glenoro pulpit. on the occasions of his absence the service was generally taken by a student or a lay preacher from some place in the vicinity. sometimes the preacher was anything but a man of parts, and was too often a source of merriment to the frivolous row of young men in the back seats. the big college student with the long, fair hair, who raved and foamed and battered all the fringe off the pulpit cushion in a gallant attempt to prove that the bible is true, a fact which, until then, no glenorian would have dreamed of calling in question; the poor, halting farmer who tacked a nervous syllable to occasional words, making his text read: "all-um we like sheep-um have gone astray-um;" the giant from the irish flats who roared out a long prayer in a manner that terrified his hearers and set all the babies crying and then ended his bellowings with "lord, hear our feeble breathings," all these were a joy to the back row and the cause of much irreverent giggling in the choir.
but whether the sermon was delivered by minister, layman or divinity student, duncan polite always found something spiritually uplifting in the service; and, indeed, so did many another, for if the preacher sometimes lacked in oratory, he made up for it in piety, and if he failed to shine in the pulpit, his life was nearly always a sermon strong and convincing.
even on the rare occasions when old silas todd led the service, the time was not misspent, in the opinion of the watchman. silas todd was one of the pillars of the church and when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. he was a pious little man, bent and thin, with a marked cockney accent. he had mild pale blue eyes and a simple, almost seraphic smile which scarcely ever left his countenance and which was the index to his character. his wife was small and pious like himself, and had the same accent and the same benevolent expression. they always sat close together on the front seat like a pair of shy children, he in his rough, loose homespun, she in her grey wincey, a neatly folded paisley shawl and a brown bonnet with a pink feather—this last ornament being the pride of silas' heart and the one bit of finery his wife permitted herself. they shared one hymn book and bible, no matter how many there might be scattered around them, and both sang in a high ecstatic key, a measure behind the choir. they swayed to and fro, quite carried away by the music, and as silas stood with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, and his wife kept her eyes modestly upon her book, they very often collided, to the great detriment of the singing and the disturbing of the pink feather. but the only sign their frequent collisions called forth was a smile of perfect accord and redoubled energy in the singing and swaying.
silas was modest and never shouldered the task of leading the service until all hope of the preacher's appearing had been given up. on such occasions the congregation would assemble and sit quietly expectant; even the back row, who waited at the church shed until they were in sufficient numbers to brave an entry into the church, having flopped noisily into their places. the choir would whisper and the organist nervously turn over the leaves of the hymn book. then the fathers of the church would confer, look through the window or tip-toe to the door, confer again, and once more gaze anxiously in the direction from which the preacher was expected to appear.
at this point there would arise from the todd pew such a fluttering and twittering as can be heard in the nest when the mother-bird is encouraging her little ones to fly. mrs. todd, acting as monitor, would give silas many pushes and nudges which he modestly resisted, until her efforts were augmented by those of his brother officials, when, yielding at last to their importunities, he would slowly rise and go shyly and lingeringly up to the pulpit desk. and the congregation would settle back with a resigned air to listen to the simple, good old fellow give a long and tedious recital of his spiritual experiences, punctuated by many sighs and tearful "amens" from beneath the sympathetic paisley shawl.
but in spite of much comfort afforded by the methodists, duncan polite's heart was often heavy with foreboding. he could not help seeing that andrew johnstone must soon come to open war with the new party in the church. in his well-meant and vigorous efforts to make everyone tread the old paths the ruling elder produced a great amount of friction; for, though he feared god, he did not regard man, and woe betide the reckless youth who made himself too conspicuous in the reform movement.
the sabbath school was his stronghold, for there he was superintendent and monarch absolute, and there he seized every opportunity to publicly rebuke anyone who dared transgress his rigid laws.
but the rising generation was not to be wholly deterred from rising by even the terrors of splinterin' andra; and, as duncan polite feared, the inevitable conflict ensued.
the immediate cause of the rupture was a church organ, merely a myth as yet, but real enough to arouse the apostle of ancient customs to his best fighting mood. the very mention of an instrument made by man to be used in the worship of god, was to the ruling elder the extreme of sacrilege. but in spite of his disapproval, the young people went so far as to hold a meeting at which to discuss the possibility of their purchasing the coveted instrument.
miss cotton, the chief dress and mischiefmaker in the village, although no longer absolutely young, was the leader of the rising generation, and she counselled just going ahead without splinterin' andra's advice.
there were not many, however, who were possessed of either her courage or her indiscretion. they all agreed, though, that andrew johnstone was the one insurmountable barrier to their hopes. most of the other elders had been approached in a tentative way. peter mcnabb was a broad-minded man with such a passion for music that, though he looked askance at any innovation, yet he would have welcomed anything that would help the singing. old donald fraser considered an organ an unmixed evil and remarked, when asked for his opinion on the subject, that it would be "clean defyin' o' the almighty" to introduce one into the church. but he had a very ambitious wife and daughter, and as the latter had been taking music lessons and cherishing rosy dreams of one day playing in church, the organ party felt that mr. fraser would not be quite immovable. old john hamilton, of course, scarcely counted. he said "aye, aye," in a dazed way when his daughters clamoured for his consent, adding that "he'd see what andra said." peter farquhar, they knew, might be difficult, as he belonged to the oa and was, therefore, very old-fashioned; but they all agreed that if andrew johnstone could be moved, all the others would follow; so some one must ask his permission.
miss cotton suggested that wee andra, the son of old andra, would be the proper person to carry their request to the elder. "wee andra" the young man had been called in his babyhood, to distinguish him from his father, and he still bore the anomalous title though he stood six-feet-four in his moccasins and was disproportionately broad. but in spite of these physical securities, the young giant flatly refused the doubtful honour of approaching his father on the sore subject; so, after much discussion, the delicate task devolved upon mr. watson, the schoolmaster. the master had "tack" and education, miss cotton explained, and was just the man for the position. so, fortified by this flattery, the young man went up over the hills one morning on his dangerous quest.
the schoolmaster was a young man who was born for agitation; he loved to throw himself heart and soul into some new enterprise, and upon this occasion he had the satisfaction at least of getting up plenty of excitement. what transpired in that fatal interview between him and the ruling elder could never be accurately learned from the former. when questioned upon the subject, he confined his remarks to dark hints regarding antediluvian pig-headedness and backwoods ignorance, but wee andra, who in his heart was rather proud of his sire's fighting qualities, spread the account of the schoolmaster's defeat over the whole neighbourhood, with the result that for a season the agitators left their common enemy to turn upon and rend each other.
on the evening after the encounter, duncan polite sat expectantly on his door-step. he knew that andrew would be sure to come down to tell him of the affair, and he was waiting in some trepidation, hoping that his fiery old friend had not said something which would wreck forever the peace of glenoro church.
duncan scarcely felt equal to shouldering any more burdens that day, for only the morning before donald had left for college. the old man had sent him away with high hopes for his future; but he missed his boy more than he could tell. for donald had been as his own son ever since the neil boys had been left fatherless. "the neil boys" they were always called, for their father, as well as their mother, had been a mcdonald and, of necessity, his sons used his first name only. neil mcdonald had died when archie was an infant, and had left donald at the head of the family, a circumstance which might have proved disastrous to both donald and the family had it not been for duncan polite. for in his boyhood donald had bade fair to inherit his father's fame, and in the good old fighting days when men used their axes in argument, neil more was the fiercest warrior between the two lakes. but as manhood approached, discretion had tempered young donald's valour; he had grown up under the gentle but potent influence of his uncle and had developed a character of which duncan polite was justly proud.
but now donald was gone; and duncan was sitting thinking sadly of his loss and of this coming trouble, when a sturdy, square figure came down the darkening road.
"come away in, andra," said duncan polite rising, while collie bowed his respectful welcome, "come away in, for you will be finding it cool on the step, whatever."
but andrew preferred to sit out of doors.
duncan divined at once from his manner that he was in a very bad frame of mind, and so attempted to lead the conversation into a safe channel. "i hear we will be having a fine young man next sabbath," he commenced hopefully, "mr. murray. i would be hearing mr. cameron speak of him often."
andrew johnstone grunted.
"aye, mebby," he remarked sourly. "whatever he's like he'll suit the young folk anyway, for he'll be new, an' that's a' they want. man, duncan, the youth o' this day are jist fair daft! the athenians were naething to them, for their one desire is to possess some new thing. they've got a new church, an' they're goin' to hae a new meenister, an' they're wantin' them new bit tinklin' hymns; aye, an' they're wantin' new elders, ah'm sure o' that. when you an' me an' a few more o' the auld buddies slip awa, they'll jist be gettin' a new god an' then ah houp they'll be setisfied!"
"och, och, andra," said duncan polite soothingly. "lads and lassies will be young, an' we would be that way ourselves once, and they will be better than you know. there's your own lad now, an' sandy——"
"andra! oor andra!" cried that young man's father. "the maist upsettin' scamp in the hale pack, an' it's his ain faither has to say it in shame an' humiliation! him an' sandy are jist gone fair daft. it's fleein' here to this tea-meetin' an stravagin' yonder to some bit choir practise, an' here awa, there awa, until ah dinna ken what's to be the end o' it! aye, an' the next thing they've gotten intill their bit heids is that they must get a bit o' an idolatrous music boax for the kirk! yon bit thistle heid o' a schoolmaister cam' till me aboot the thing the day; what d'ye think o' yon?"
"dear, dear, that would be a peety," said the champion of youth, somewhat disconcerted.
"aye, they've come till it at last! ah've kenned weel they've been hatchin' plans this while back an' that oor andra was in it, aye, an' donal' afore he gaed away, but ah jist gave no heed to their bit noise, an' andra kenned his faither better than to come till him wi' his norms till yon bit slippery, feather-heided crater cam' till me this mornin'."
"an' would he be asking you if they could get one?"
"askin' me! he didna jist order me to hae the thing bought, but it was michty near't. sez he, 'we hae gotten the consent o' a' the ither elders, maister johnstone, an' we know ye jist can't refuse us; we'd like to hae it afore the new meenister comes,'—the danderin' bit eejit!"
"i hope you would not be too hard on him, andra, mr. watson would be meaning no harm——"
"no harm! and are ye the man, duncan mcdonald, to ask an elder of the kirk to countenance evil? ah wes not half so hard on the buddy as he deserved, but ah jist telled him pretty plain what ah thought o' them a' turnin' the hoose o' god into a circus! 'ye hae the consent o' a' the elders, hae ye?' ah sez. 'an' noo it's ma consent ye want, is it? weel, ye hae it!' ah sez;' for if ye're that set on gettin' yer bit screechin' boax ma advice'll no hold ye back, so ye may get yer piece o' idolatory,' ah sez; 'but mark ma word!' ah sez, 'mark ma word, the day yon thing raises its noise an' pollutes the holy place— ah'll no resign. oh! no, that's what ye're lookin' for,' ah sez, for ah'd heerd rumours—'ah'll no resign,' ah sez, 'but ah'll jist wait till the sabbath's ower an' ah'll get ma ax,' ah sez, 'an by the help o' the almichty ah'll smash the abomination into a thoosand splinters!'"
his stick came down upon the doorstone with a crash that prophesied total destruction to the offending instrument.
"hoots, toots, andra!" cried duncan polite reprovingly, "it's jist violent you will be; and, indeed, i will be thinkin' it would not be right to drive the young folks."
"the maister drove oot wi' a scourage them as misused the hoose o' god," responded the apostle of force severely.
"aye, the master," said duncan, his fine face lighting up. "the master!" he repeated the word tenderly. "eh, but that would be a fine word, andra, a fine word. yes, he would be doing that once, but that would not be his spirit, ah, no indeed! for he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth! eh, eh, and yet he would be the master o' the whole universe!" his voice died away, he sat motionless, his long slender hands hanging at his side, his eyes seeing wondrous sights on the purple slope of the opposite hillside.
andrew johnstone ceased his vicious whacking of duncan's asters and conveyed his stick to its decorous sabbath position behind him. his friend's sublime spirituality always cooled splinterin' andra's wrath.
there was a long silence, the sound of a bell tinkling away in the dark forest opposite and the distant murmur of the village alone broke the stillness. andrew rose to go in a much better frame of mind. "you an' me, duncan," he said with some sadness, "belong to a past generation. maister cameron's gone, an' the auld buddies are slippin' awa fast, an' whiles ah hae little patience wi' the new fangled notions. will the country be a god-fearin' one, ah wonder, when we're a' awa?"
it was the question and also the tragedy of their lives, the question duncan polite's whole life was given up towards answering.
"we must jist be trusting that to the lord, andra," he said with his usual hopefulness. "whatever changes come, he is the same yesterday, to-day and forever."
but duncan polite realised the affair was not ended. he knew it was not likely that the young people would defy splinterin' andra and drive him to violence, but the fire of gossip would be set going and he feared his friend's life would be embittered. he was thinking deeply and sadly over the problem the next morning as he dug up the potatoes from his garden. there was coonie, now, if he set his sharp tongue going against the elder there would be no end to the trouble. he glanced up and saw the subject of his thoughts coming slowly down the road in his old buckboard.
why the glenoro mail-carrier was called coonie instead of henry greene, which was his real name, was, like all that gentleman's personal affairs, shrouded in mystery. some doubted that coonie himself knew, though if he did it was not at all likely he would divulge the secret, for he guarded very carefully his own private business. whatever concerned himself held a monopoly of his reticence, however, for in matters of current gossip he was second to none in the whole township of oro. he beat even miss cotton and mrs. fraser, for, whereas they might arrive at a stage when they had nothing more to tell, not so coonie. if he found himself without some startling news he manufactured it to suit the occasion.
his vehicle was an old buckboard with a wide seat, and a rickety old chariot it was. his custom was to sit slouching at one end of the seat, one foot upon the dashboard, the other dangling down in the dust, thus making the other end of the seat stick away up in the air, as though to suggest to any chance pedestrian that he was almost crowded out already and could accommodate no one.
his horse was a poor, decrepit, old creature, whom he had named bella, after the eldest of the pretty hamilton girls, much to that young lady's disgust. in spite of old bella's skeleton appearance and hobbling gait, coonie took great pride in her and offered many times to trot her against sandy neil's racer. her extreme lameness seemed quite appropriate, however, for in this respect she was the fitting complement to her master. for poor coonie was a cripple, scarcely able to bear his long body on his weak ankles, and when the villagers saw him stumble painfully out of his vehicle at the post-office and drag himself to the veranda, even the person outraged by his latest flight of fancy forgave and pitied him. everyone felt that the nimbleness of his tongue was perhaps only some slight compensation for the uselessness of his feet.
his daily drive through glenoro was something of an event to all the inhabitants, for he was willing to stop everywhere and anywhere and tell the latest news. old andrew considered him a most pernicious individual and a breeder of evil in the glen, and for that reason as well as on general principles, coonie took a particular delight in libelling the ruling elder. he pulled up as he reached duncan's gate. he never passed without a few words with the old man. not because he ever heard or told any gossip at duncan polite's, but coonie could never forget a certain dark night when the mail bag was lost and the drunken mail-carrier in danger of finding himself behind prison bars, a night when duncan polite had toiled over the hills through mud and rain, and had rescued him. not a person in the whole countryside, except the two, knew of the affair, but coonie remembered, and in his queer way tried to repay the man who had saved him.
"mornin'!" he called, somewhat crustily, as was his wont in opening a conversation. "how's things this mornin'?"
duncan had hurried into the house and now emerged with a dipperful of creamy buttermilk. coonie drank it off in one long pull.
"ginger, that's prime!" he cried, drawing a long breath. "goes right to the dry spot. how's your potatoes?"
"oh, they will be very good, very good indeed," said duncan. he hesitated a moment and then continued. "you would be hearing about the master and the organ?" he questioned in some embarrassment.
coonie shot out a look of surprise from his small bright eyes; that duncan polite should open any such subject was an amazing thing.
"yep," he answered sharply. "why?"
"i will be having no right to interfere, coonie." duncan polite never by the slightest gesture hinted that he had any claim on the mail-carrier's gratitude. "i will be having no right to interfere, but this will be a thing that will do harm to the church and the lord's work, and if it is talked about,——" duncan's reticence was overcoming him again after this unusual outburst.
coonie nodded in perfect comprehension. he planted his foot upon the dashboard once more. "you don't want folks to be gabbin' about yours truly up on the hill yonder?" he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction where andrew johnstone's house appeared far up the slope. "well, i guess i'll have to choke off a few. gedap thar, whatter ye doin'!" he gave old bella a lash with the whip which she noticed merely by a switch of her tail. his shoulders sank to their accustomed limpness and he took no notice of duncan's thanks as he drove off. he was really disappointed, for he had prepared such a version of the story, purporting to have come from the oa, as would set splinterin' andra in a rage forever. he sighed over his loss.
but his attention was soon diverted by a welcome sight. sim baskerville, the village store-keeper and postmaster, commonly called basketful in accordance with the custom of the country, could already be seen, even from this height, coming out upon the veranda at short intervals to see if the mail were coming. nothing annoyed the postmaster so much as to have the mail arrive late, and nothing pleased the mail-carrier so much as to annoy the postmaster. mr. basketful was a choleric englishman, and one of coonie's chief diversions was to put him into a rage by a dilatory approach to the village. so, seeing his enemy on the lookout, he let old bella crawl down the hill with maddening slowness, looking round, meanwhile, for somebody with whom he might stop and talk.
the first opportunity presented itself with the whirring of a sewing machine, coming from a little house on the edge of the village. it was a tiny white cottage, apparently kept from encroaching upon the road by a thick rope of lilacs, a trim little place, painfully neat. when that sound emanated from within, coonie knew that the village dressmaker was at home; and as she bore a fierce hatred to him and all his doings, he never failed to give her a call when possible. he drew up his buckboard before the lilac bushes, therefore, happily conscious of certain vigorous gesticulations from the post-office veranda, of a character calculated to encourage rapid approach.
"hello! in there!" he shouted.
there was no response, except for a more determined whizzing of the machine.
"got a message for you, 'liza!"
to the angry occupant of the house it was agony to go on sewing. who knew but that, for once, the old fool might be telling the truth, she reflected. perhaps someone in the oa had sent word with him that she was wanted there for a day's sewing, and she knew nothing would please coonie better than to have her refuse to listen.
but by this time her tormentor, despairing of ever enticing her out by fair words, resolved to launch a bomb which he knew was sure to bring the besieged raging to the walls. "got a message from tom poole!" he roared, loud enough to be heard at mrs. fraser's across the valley. "he says to tell you he's comin' down sparkin' to-morrow night!"
miss cotton flashed into the doorway, white with rage. she, who had never seen the man who dared to pay her loverlike attentions, to have her name bawled out over the countryside coupled with that of a man who was a widower of six months with a family of as many children! she shook her scissors in his face.
"if you don't shut up your tomfoolery, you blatherin' old idiot!" she cried, in a sort of shrieking whisper, "i'll throw boilin' water over you!"
coonie stared in injured righteousness. "well i never! that's all the thanks i get for obligin' you. i can't help it if he's gone spooney on you; next time i bring you a message——"
"yes, next time you bring me a message it'll be the last you'll take to a livin' soul. drive your old hearse away from my door, will you, an' tell your lies to somebody that's big enough fool to believe you!"
the door slammed and the sewing machine buzzed wrathfully, and coonie sent bella scrambling down the hill, his drooping shoulders heaving with convulsive laughter. to put 'liza cotton into a rage, while sim basketful, in a similar condition, was popping in and out of his store door like a jack-in-the-box, was worth the whole day's drive. he meandered along chuckling loudly, but suddenly checked his mirth as he espied maggie hamilton standing at the gate beneath the oaks and holding a bundle under her arm. this was evidently intended for him, so he drove to the opposite side of the road and crawled along with drooping shoulders and abstracted mien.
but this particular miss hamilton understood coonie's dark ways and knew how to deal with him. she darted across the road and caught old bella by the head.
"hold on now, smarty!" she said. "you needn't pretend you've turned deaf and blind all at once, you're stupid enough without. here's a parcel for aunt mary mclean, coonie, and mother wants you to take it to her, please, like an old duck. you know aunt mary thinks you're the handsomest fellow in oro."
but coonie was not be flattered into obliging anyone. "look here, you," he growled, "what d'ye think i run this mail for, anyhow? think it's a charitable institution? you tell your aunt mary maria stick-in-the-mud that if she thinks the almighty created me to cart truck over the country for lazy lumps like you that thinks they're too good to walk, she'd better go an' get informed all over again."
but maggie had expected this and was prepared. "jess! sarah! bell!" she cried, "come out here quick and settle this old donkey! he's gone balky again!"
there was a chorus of shrieks, a swish of skirts down the garden path, and reinforcements in the shape of three more young ladies emerged from the gate and fell upon the rebellious mail-carrier. they climbed into the shaking old buckboard and maggie seized the reins and turned old bella up the hill again.
"now, we'll drive you clean back to lakeview, if you don't speak up smart and say you'll take it!" she cried.
but coonie did not mind. mr. basketful was by this time in the middle of the road, so he prolonged the encounter as long as possible.
"go ahead," he said, settling himself comfortably in his seat; "you'll soon be at the oa, if you keep on. i bet that's where jessie wants to go to see what's the latest news from don neil."
"yes, and you want to go up the hill and talk to 'liza cotton," retorted jessie.
"that's it," laughed maggie, pulling the old horse almost into the ditch, "you'd trot off with a bundle quick enough if she asked you."
coonie roared. "well, that's true. haw! haw! i'd start off that quick i'd never git stopped. gosh! but ain't she the old scorpion!" he exclaimed with feeling, "say, if her an' me was the only folks left in the world, i'd kill her an' live alone. see here, you scalawags, clear out an' leave that poor brute alone, an' i'll take your trash."
it was a surrender. the victorious quartette leaped from the buckboard and retired, with many admonitions for his guidance in his future dealings with them, warnings which coonie pretended not to hear.
his shoulders sagged again as he slowly approached the post-office. he paused a few moments on the bridge, to gaze meditatively into the water, then he spent some time gesticulating to an imaginary person down at the mill-dam, and at last, slowly and with every appearance of insupportable weariness, dragged up to the post-office door.
"kind of hot," he remarked genially, noticing the perspiring countenance of the indignant postmaster.
mr. basketful took the mail-bag with a withering air. "kind o'," he remarked sarcastically. "guess your 'orse 'ad a sunstroke on the road. 'ere 'syl, tend to that hanimal, will you?"
a stylishly dressed young man came down with elegant leisure from his position on a cracker barrel and proceeded to water coonie's horse. the mail-carrier's helpless condition called for assistance which was always freely rendered. the person to whom the task generally fell was mr. sylvanus todd, who, by reason of his leisurely habits, found plenty of time, when not assisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge around the post-office and look up the street to see what the hamilton girls were doing. sylvanus always assisted coonie most willingly; he was a young man who was noted all over the township of oro for his obliging ways and his mannerly deportment. indeed, mr. todd posed as an authority on all matters of etiquette. he even went so far once as to admonish wee andra on the errors of his pedestrianism. "when you're walkin' with a lady, andra," sylvanus had said kindly, "you'd ought to let her walk up agin' the buildin's." but so far from improving the giant's manners this good advice only caused him to place his adviser in a tank of cheese factory whey and to continue thereafter to walk as seemed right in his own eyes.
coonie did not care for syl todd; he had much of the simple guilelessness of his parents and did not take teasing with any pleasurable degree of asperity. so the mail-carrier generally treated him with silent contempt. he swung himself from the buckboard and hobbled painfully to the store veranda.
"business seems pressin' with you, mr. todd," he remarked as he lit his pipe. "you're always in an awful rush."
mr. todd gave a doubtful grin. "well say, coonie, this here's the backwoodsest place i ever seen; us americans can't stand it."
sylvanus had spent six months in the united states, managing a gigantic business firm, he had hinted, from which enterprise he had returned to the parental roof, a sadder if not a wiser man, to take up the more lucrative employment of making cheese. he never quite outlived the glory of his travels, however.
coonie grunted. "you should a' stayed over there an' been president. they must be awful lonesome since you left. any noos?"
"well, i should snicker if there wasn't! the master's got into an awful row!"
his listener sighed deeply. what an opportunity this would have been to set his version of the story going!
"what's eatin' him?" he asked with wonderful self-control. "neil kids been lickin' him again?"
"worse nor that; he's got into a row with splinterin' andra!"
"gosh!" coonie's amazement would have deceived a much more astute individual than sylvanus todd. "what's that old wind-mill got himself flappin' about now?"
"about gettin' the organ for the presbyterian church. watson spoke to splinterin' andra about it an' the old fellow gave him hail columbia, as they say in the states."
mr. basketful was coming out with the mall-bag.
"it's true, every word of it, coonie," he said, his wrath having vanished. "that's the way with them presbyterians; they're that stiff they can't 'elp 'avin' trouble."
coonie scrambled into his buckboard, feeling doubly crippled in the galling restriction that had been put upon his unruly member. he drove off without a word, not even stopping at mrs. fraser's gate at the top of the hill. syl todd sat upon the veranda of the store, watching until his old buckboard sank behind the south hill, wondering if he were ill.
duncan had never before tried to exercise a restraining influence upon coonie's tongue, though as he watched his old buckboard straying down into the valley, crossing and recrossing the road, to allow its owner to joke and gossip with this one and that, the watchman often thought what a power for good coonie might be in glenoro if only his heart were touched by the grace of god. his first attempt at stemming the tide of the mail-carrier's gossip met with wonderful success, however. people discovered that for some inexplicable reason, coonie seemed to have no interest whatever in splinterin' andra's behaviour over the proposal of an organ, and with the chief stoker idle, the fire of gossip soon died for want of fuel. the young people postponed their project indefinitely, and gradually the affair dropped out of the public interest, making way for a much more important matter.
