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Mivane noted suddenly that the woman rocking the cradle was laughing with an ostentatious affectation of covert slyness, and a responsive twinkle gleamed in the eyes of John Ronackstone. As he caught the grave and surprised glance of his visitor he made a point of dropping the air of a comment aside, which he, as well as she, had insistently brought to notice, and Mivane was aware that here was something which sought an opportunity of being revealed as if by necessity.

“Well, sir,” Ronackstone began in a tone of a quasi-apology, “we were just saying–that is, I sez to X, who was in here a while ago,–I sez, ‘I’ll tell you what is goin’ to happen,’–I sez, ‘old Gentleman Rick,’–excuse the freedom, sir,–‘he’ll be wantin’ to send somebody else in Ralph Emsden’s place.’ X, he see the p’int, just as you see it. He sez, ‘Somebody that won’t be missed–somebody not genteel enough to play loo with him after supper,’ sez X. ‘Or too religious,’ sez I. ‘Or can’t sing a good song or tell a rousing tale,’ sez X. ‘Or listen an’ laugh in the right places at the gentleman’s old cracks about the great world,’ sez I. ‘He’ll never let Ralph Emsden go,’ sez X. ‘Jus’ some poor body will do,’ sez I. ‘Jus’ man enough to be scalped by the Injuns if the red sticks take after him,’ sez X. ‘Or have his throat cut if the cow-drivers feel rough yet,’ sez I. ‘Jus’ such a one ez me,’ sez X. ‘Or me,’ sez I.”

“Sir,” said old Mivane, rising, and the impressive dignity of his port was such that the cradle stopped rocking as if a spell were upon it, and every child paused in its play, sprawling where it lay, “I am obliged to you for your polite expression of opinion of me, which I have never done aught to justify. I have nothing more to urge upon the question of the details which brought me hither, but of one thing be certain,–if Emsden does not go upon this mission I shall be the ambassador. I apprehend no danger whatever to myself, and I wish you a very good day.”

And he stepped forth with his wonted jaunty alacrity, leaving the man and his wife staring at each other with as much surprise as if the roof had fallen in.

A greater surprise awaited Mivane without. The rain was falling anew. In vast transparent tissues it swept with the gusty wind over the nearest mountains of the Great Smoky Range, whose farther reaches were lost in fog. The slanting lines, vaguely discerned in the downpour, almost obliterated the presence of the encompassing forests about the stockade. He noted how wildly the great trees were yet swaying, and he realized, for he could not have heard the blast, that a sudden severe wind-storm had passed over the settlement while he was within doors. The blockhouse, the tallest of the buildings, loomed up darkly amidst the gathering gray vapor, and through the great gates of the stockade, which opened on the blank cloud, were coming at the moment several men bearing a rude litter, evidently hastily constructed. On this was stretched the insensible form of Ralph Emsden, who had been stricken down in the woods with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm by the falling of a branch of a great tree uprooted by the violence of the gusts. He had almost miraculously escaped being crushed, and was not fatally hurt, but examination disclosed that he was absolutely and hopelessly disabled for the time being, and Richard Mivane realized that he himself was the duly accredited ambassador to the herders on the Keowee River.

He went home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household, who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded them with blended awe and respect, than he reft his cocked hat from his head and flung it upon the floor. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang up so precipitately at the dread sight that she overturned her stool and drew a stitch awry in her sampler, longer than the women of her family were accustomed to take. The children gazed spellbound. The weavers at the loom were petrified; even the creak of the treadle and the noisy thumping of the batten–those perennial sounds of a pioneer home–sunk into silence. The two negroes at the end of the vista beyond the shed-room, with the ox-yoke and plough-gear which they were mending between them, opened wide mouths and became immovable save for the whites of astonished rolling eyes. Then, and this exceeded all precedent, Richard Mivane clutched his valued peruke and, with an inward plaintive deprecation of the extremity of this act of desperation, he cast it upon the hat, and looked around, bald, despairing, furious, and piteous.