Lem

“ Down where nature has unfurled a grassy, level land and men walk in the open and can see each other's faces? Down thah, Lem, where hearts beat uncontaminated beyond the maelstrom of feudal hate, and where all men are brothers—down in the land of hope—hope that makes a song of life—in the land of hope, Lem,—a cloudless, sunshiny fairy world—where dreams come true?
"You said you would love to go to Lexington to my grandfather, but you won't leave the mountains until you have killed the revenuer and Sap McGill. Is that evidence that you love me, Lem? ”

“ She suddenly tore away from him and ran ahead. She dared not trust herself to linger longer. He followed, a tribute of grief in his resigned, dull eyes, like a man with flowers to put on a mound.
When Lem left the spot, Orlick ducked sneakingly out of a dense clump of laurel where he had watched the love scene with burning eyes—eyes glittering with hate and jealousy.
Unheard and unobserved, he slunk away through the pawpaw thicket into the impenetrable rhododendrons. For hours he had followed Lem that morning. ”

“ Moreover, she knew Lem was not accustomed to visiting Junction City, because he never received any mail, and because the denizens of Junction City were rank sympathizers with the McGill faction.
And always she yearned for sight of Lem's honest face. Not a day passed but what she cherished thoughts of home. When she was apparently in her gayest mood, Lem's tall shadow stood in the background waiting for her—always waiting. While occupied in her tensest study hours, down in her subconsciousness lay a memory that stirred like a thing having life. ”

“ How appallingly strange that a phase of hate should assuage the pain in any heart. But this was a truism that for the time inspired Lem to action and forgetfulness of his environments, for now his previously dull eyes were afire, as he turned back into his cell for the first time. He felt his way to the limits of the wall. ”

“ The satin lustre of her curls was moist and her bosom lifted, palpitating with the advent of the new, great joyous thing that stood upon the threshold of her life to enter and spread its felicity and untold bliss.
All oblivious, Lem was kneeling amidst this new-found grace, and the quiet of a peace that cometh only to the righteous. Belle-Ann had suffered its pangs. She had reaped its peace. She knew the pathology of the pestilent revenge-sore that blights the lives of men. And she experienced all that Lem felt. ”

“ And thus he took up this three-step march, the while the ugly visage of the revenuer projected itself against the gloom, and he saw Burton's dog-grin. He saw him smear the sweat off his leering face, and fancied he heard his vaunting words of triumph to the commissioner, gloating over the killing of Lem's father, and the taking of himself.
And here, while Lem paced to and fro, he forgot all else save his thirst for revenge. And through these walls he heard dim voices from two graves in the hills urging him onward, and he invoked God to give him strength to endure. ”

“ Then a sudden revelation dawned upon Lem Lutts. He felt instinctively that Sap was not dead, although he could not have been whiter and more inert had he been so.
To make certain Lem cautiously shrank back, and taking care not to make the slightest sound, he worked his way around to the opposite side and gained a position where he could see McGill's face. Like a shadow he stepped out from behind a boulder and looked at Sap.
What he saw almost caused him to laugh outright. Sap was far from being dead. He was wholly conscious and wholly alive, but ludicrously quiet. ”

“ It seemed that the torturous days, weeks and months that he wandered through the hills furtively and alone, waiting and watching since his father's killing and since Lem and Belle-Ann had slipped away and out of his life, was time enough to make a decrepit, aged man. An insufferable loneliness had wrapped its tentacles around his being, and had, like a cruel tourniquet, crushed all the joy out of his soul. ”

“ He let his eyes glare into Lem's. “And you know what I am when I am angry, Henrietta. Any one who tells on me I'll kill. I'm desperate, you see. I'll murder any one who tells on me.”
Lem slid back into the darkness of the hall and fled to his room. Nothing in this house brought him anything but trouble, and he only wanted to get away as soon as he could.
“That is nonsense,” Henrietta told Freeman. “You will never kill any one. You are too great a coward. ”

“ They sat in the moonshine on the witch-elm block, and the whip-poor-will was calling. They came here in the whispering gloaming ere twilight and night had parted. They still sat there; the girl talking incessantly. Time galloped by unheeded with the flight of an affrighted Pegasus. Phantom shadows grew and gesticulated and stretched their wraith-like arms out toward them. And the moon slipped over the spur and laved them with an effulgent benediction. Lem sat non-committal and stoic.
Belle-Ann's curls bobbed in the moonlight as she tossed them back restlessly. ”

“ Susie and Bronson were in New York with little Frank, so that Lem's care during his last days devolved on the haphazard services of the neighbors. He was out of his head most of the time, though never violent, and all through the long nights lay flat on his back, looking at the ceiling with bright, blank eyes, driving his ox-team, skidding logs, plowing in stony ground and remembering to favor the off-horse whose wind wasn't good, planting, hoeing, tending his sheep, and teaching obstinate lambs to drink. He used quaint, coaxing names for these, such as a mother uses for her baby. ”

“ When the reading was finished the girl sat for a long time looking out of the small opening at the gleaming blue waters beyond the cliff and her expression grew wistful and almost pensive. For the first time in her fifteen years she was wishing she had “learnin’.” Suddenly she sprang up, her face brightening. “Shags,” she said, “many’s the time Uncle Lem has said ‘regrettin’ doesn’t get you anywhere. ”

“ Belle-Ann filled up the whole of Lem's wild, humble life. Without her the future held no hope. Without hope he wanted to die. His vain effort to dislodge the scourge within his soul, goaded him to maniacal thoughts.
Then, in an unlooked-for instant, an awful wrong shaped itself to a determination. He would hurl his tortured self over the cliff. He told himself that he was not fearful of the fall. In proof thereof, he rushed to the jagged brink of the ledge and looked down into hazy moonlit space and was unafraid. ”

“ The older man grew quieter under Lem's care than he had been for years, and if he felt one of his insane impulses overtaking him, ran totteringly to grasp his protector's arm until, quaking and shivering, he was himself again. Lem used to take him up to the sheep-pasture for the day sometimes. He liked it up there himself, he said, and maybe 'twould be good for Uncle Hi. He often reported with pride that the old man talked as sensible as anybody, "get him off where it's quiet." ”

“ She heard his inarticulate utterance, as with a fervent cry he called out to God, from his dire distraught heart.
Belle-Ann's white bosom heaved and caught a sob of salient joy as she darted up the trail toward Eagle Crown. She would fly to his side now. Lem needed her now. He needed her, who was a part of his life, there to succor him in this the blackest bereft hour of his existence. She knew that God had heard his abandoned supplications. She knew that God was reaching down to him a staff of righteous strength. ”

“ And that's the way; they are both so sly and artful, they are seldom or never caught in the act; so though when a melon patch or hen-roost is robbed, or some fine young trees are hacked to pieces, every one feels sure it was Lem or Dolly who did the mischief, yet it is difficult to prove it on them. Lem has had more thrashings than any boy of his size that ever lived, I believe, but what's the use? It only makes him worse than ever. ”

“ If idle hands are the only hands for which the devil finds work, Lem was in little danger of doing the devil's work during those days. He was too busy doing Miss Susan's. The great stove in the kitchen seemed to swallow wood by the cord during those hot days, and Miss Susan, for economy's sake, was burning pine slabs from the sawmill, and they had to be chopped. The big, drab-painted wood box always needed filling. It was always empty to the last handful of pine bark, Lem thought.
The boarding-house dishes, too, seemed to breed in great masses, like sturgeon eggs. ”

“ She were a comin' down the tracks."
Lem muttered a savage oath, and faced the scow preparatory to entering. Looking back over his shoulder, he asked:
"Be ye comin' in, Lon?"
"Nope; I'm goin' to bed. Say, Lem, while ye was away, ye didn't get ear of no good place to make a haul soon, did ye?"
"Yep; I tied up to Tarrytown goin' down. There be heaps of rich folks there. Middy Burnes what runs the tug says as how there be a feller there richer than the devil.... Hell! I've forgot his name!"
Lem halted on the gangplank and thought for a moment.
"Nope, I ain't; I jest thought of it!... Shellington! ”

“ Near the boat landing is the club house, set up on piling, with a veranda across the front. The rest of High Bar is only a few acres of sedge and marsh.
"Yea-uh!" says the native. "Must be somebody thar. Door's open. Yea-uh! Thar's old Lem Robbins, who allus does the cookin'. Hey, Lem!"
Lem waves cordial and waddles down to meet us. He's a fat, grizzled old pirate who looked bored and discontented.
"Got anybody with you, Lem?" asks the native.
"Not to speak of," says Lem. "Only a loony sort of gent that wears skin-tight barber-pole pants and cusses fluent."
"That's Penrhyn!" says Mr. Robert. ”

“ Beyond the door, Lem found himself in a medical office. Uneasily he sniffed the scents of druggery and eyed the shiny instruments in cases, the scales and operating-table.
“Wha—what you goin' to do with me?” he blurted, backing away. “I aint sick! All I want is—”
“There, there, don't get excited!” cautioned the M. D., while the bearded man closed in a trifle. “You'll get your nice cell, all right. But first, you know, you've got to change your clothes. That's a rule of this place. Nobody gets a cell who doesn't wear—”
“Naw you don't!” Lem interrupted. ”

“ Lem demanded, with a sinking at the heart, for he well knew that no idle putting off would do for Ruth if her friend's lover were really locked up.
"Dorn Hackett," replied the mail-rider, proud of his news, and glad to have the opportunity of repetition to a new auditor,—"for the murder and robbery of Jacob Van Deust."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Lem.
"It's so, I tell you. They caught him in New Haven last night. If they'd missed him until to-day, he'd have been off for the West Indies; but a New York officer, who got on his track in New London, caught him. And they say he fought like a tiger. ”

“ For the first time Lem's face lost a measure of its despair. His eyes lighted up with the advent of an emollient hope, and a half-smile touched his lips.
"Come 'long, Belle-Ann," he agreed, "let's do thet." And a prayer mounted in Belle-Ann's breast as she called to Buddy to come along and bring a lantern. Then hand in hand they wound their way down the moonlit mountain-side toward the deserted church. And up from the girl's heart a spa of hope was abubble. The joy of life was again strong upon her. ”

“ It was Lem who first took alarm about the fall that little Frank had, down the cellar stairs. He hurt his spine somehow—our local doctor could not tell exactly how—and as the injury only made him limp a little, nobody thought much about it, until he began to have difficulty in walking. Then Lem sent for a doctor from Rutland who, as soon as he examined the child, stuck out his lower lip and rubbed his chin ominously. He pronounced the trouble something with a long name which none of us had ever heard, and said that Frank would be a hopeless cripple if it were not cured soon. ”

“ Then it was that he called Buddy and Slab out to the horse-block and took them into his confidence, after Slab had sung "Kitty Wells."
"Now—Buddy," Lem was saying with profound emphasis, "to-morry yo'll be th' man o' th' house, understan'?—an' yo' got t' be a man—and run things like a man—'cause yore brother Lem'll be gone away from heah to-morry, Buddy—do yo' 'low yore brother kin trust yo'-all, Buddy?—eh, kin he trust yo'?" ”

“ Whereupon, he wheeled quickly and met Last Time's scarred face grinning through the bars at him pleasantly, and obviously amused. Knowing that the fellow had been watching his antics around the electric globe, and acutely conscious of his own crudeness, Lem stepped to the door with an abashed smile.
"How are you now?" inquired the convict.
"I ain't powerful happy," returned Lem lugubriously. "This air the all-fired'st cave I ever been into. I 'low I'll never git used t' hit—leastways I air glad thet yo'-all come round t' talk. ”

“ Lem finished his bacon. His freckled face set in firm resolution.
“I'm goin' to stay here an' help you be a saint, pop,” he said. “I'm goin' to be a saint, too. I can be a young one, can't I?”
“I'll be eternally dod-basted if—” Harvey began angrily, but he remembered himself. “No, Lem,” he said with forced gentleness, “that ain't in my plans. I can't let you do it. Not now. You 're too young yet. You go back to your aunt an' be a good boy, an' when I get her all paid off an' get you out of pawn, maybe I 'll see about it. ”