That night the little lady slept the sweet sleep of a tender conscience, set wholly at rest by a full confession. Old lady Gordon also rested well, after having taken some drops out of the bag hanging at the head of her bed, thus settling an uncommonly hearty supper. So that neither of the ladies either heard or dreamed of a drama which was being enacted that same night under the dark of the moon, and which threatened to turn into a tragedy with the light of the next morning.

It was true—as has been said before—that old lady Gordon had known all along of the trouble brewing between her own cook and Miss Judy's maid of all work. She had also observed the growing fierceness of their rivalry for the heart and hand of her gardener and coachman, Enoch Cotton, but she had not, even yet, thought of interfering, since the affair had progressed without the slightest interference with her own comfort. She had merely laughed a little, as she always did at any candid display of the weakness of human nature; though she had incidentally given Eunice a characteristic word of advice.

"Don't make any more of a fool of yourself than you can help, Eunice," old lady Gordon said, with careless scorn. "You're going about this matter in the wrong way. Stop all this foolery, all this quarrelling and fighting, and stop it now—right off the reel, too. And I'll give you a big red feather for your hat. One red feather is worth more than any number of fights,—for getting a man back."

Eunice thanked her and accepted the present in dignified silence, but without saying what she herself thought of it as an antidote for man's inconstancy to woman, and her mistress had no means of knowing whether she ever really tried it or not. In fact, the whole matter passed out of old lady Gordon's mind as an unimportant incident which had amused her for a moment. And there was nothing to recall it, the warning which she had let fall having made Eunice more than ever cautious in keeping out of her mistress's sight all sign or sound of what was going on.

Thus it was that the danger grew quietly and in darkness, utterly unknown to everybody except the three dusky persons most closely concerned. It had long been unsafe for Merica to come into Eunice's kitchen, and it now became dangerous for her even to venture inside the back gate, when coming for the young master's clothes or taking them home. Eunice was the very soul of frankness with all save her mistress, the only human being of whom she ever stood in awe. She accordingly made no sort of mystery of her intentions to any one else; on the contrary, she told Enoch Cotton, in the plainest language at her command, just what she meant to do:—

"Ef ever dat reg'lar ebo darst set her hoof over dat doo' sill agin!"

And Enoch knew that she meant what she said, and that she would do it, whatever it was. The only doubt was as to the meaning of "ebo." The term may have been merely an abbreviation of ebony and nothing worse than a slur upon Merica's complexion. And yet it can hardly have been anything quite so simple and harmless, if only for the reason that Eunice was the blacker of the two rivals—if there be degrees in blackness; and, moreover, Eunice's way of using the word really made it sound like the very worst thing that one colored person could possibly say against another. At any rate, Enoch Cotton felt that the crisis was come, and he warned Merica, as any honorable man—regardless of the color of his skin—stands bound to guard, so far as he can, the girl whom he means to marry in the uncertain event of his being able to escape the widow who means to marry him. Merica was a little frightened at first, and she readily agreed to Enoch Cotton's elaborate plan of fetching the young master's clothes to the althÆa hedge every Monday morning at sunup, and of handing them to her there over the fence, shielded from Eunice's argus eyes by the thick dusty foliage and the dull purple flowers. The girl also consented to her lover's waiting at the hedge every Tuesday evening at sundown to take the clothes when she fetched them back and handed them to him, under shelter of the leafy screen. Eunice saw Enoch Cotton going and coming, and knew full well what these manoeuvres meant; but the althÆa hedge stood directly in front of her mistress's window, so that Eunice could only bide her time, in masterly inactivity, bound hand and foot to the burning rack of jealousy. Most bitterly trying of all was the fact that at night—and every night—while she was still busy in ministering to her mistress's wants, Enoch Cotton nearly always disappeared, and, try as she would, she could not learn whither he went.

In the rear of Miss Judy's garden, close to a secluded corner, was a half-leaning, half-fallen heap of butter-bean poles, rankly covered with vines. That little lady called it a bower, and thought it very pretty indeed. She had been somewhat disappointed at first when her butter-beans ran all to vines and did not bear at all. She had expected a good deal of those butter-beans; they had been so nice and fat and white when she planted them, and they had doubled out of the earth in such thick loops of luscious whiteness when they first came up. She had indeed told Miss Sophia that she thought there would be enough butter-beans to exchange for two (and maybe three) pairs of stockings, which Miss Sophia had needed for some time; possibly there might be so many that she herself could have a pair. But when the vines utterly failed to bear, and did nothing but riot in rank and tangled greenness over the bending, falling poles, Miss Judy consoled Miss Sophia and comforted herself by observing how very pretty and romantic the bower was. And when she observed, later in the summer, that Merica had formed a habit of going to sit in the bower every night, as soon as the day's work was done, she was quite consoled.

"Sitting there all alone must surely tame her in a measure, poor thing," Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia. "It would benefit all of us to have more time for quiet reflection. Think of the difference it must have made to Becky if she hadn't been so driven."

Accordingly Miss Judy was delicately careful to keep away from the bower, for fear of disturbing Merica's reflections. Eunice had never approached it nor even suspected its existence, thinking, when she noticed it at all, that the green tangle of vines was a mere neglected heap of butter-bean poles. Her ceaseless, fruitless search had heretofore always been turned toward the dark windows of Merica's deserted kitchen and cabin. And thus it was that the girl in comparative safety awaited her lover's coming night after night, under the dark of the moon or after its going down, as the savage women of her tribe must have awaited their warrior lovers in the deepest jungles of Africa. Nevertheless, Merica's heart was the heart of her feminine type all the world over, within and without civilization. With her, as with all her kind, to love and be loved was not enough; the other woman must see and know, before her triumph could be entirely complete. In vain Enoch Cotton pleaded and protested, and even tried again to frighten her. Every word that he uttered only made her the more determined to parade her victory openly, in utter disdain of all restraint, in unbounded contempt of all concealment. What was there for her to be afraid of? she demanded. Was she not younger than Eunice and better-looking and several shades lighter in color? And was not her hair ever so much straighter than Eunice's, when freshly combed out on a Sunday, after being tightly plaited in very small plaits and carefully wrapped with string through the whole week? Finally, she and her lover came so close to a violent quarrel that he dared not say anything more; and although Merica ceased urging the point, she was fully resolved to overthrow the screen of the althÆa hedge, to scorn its protection, at the earliest opportunity. This came sooner than she hoped for, on the evening following the accident when the fatal spark had fallen upon the wash-kettle's biggest, dryest bubble. Enoch, gravely alarmed, was waiting as usual in the shelter of the althÆa hedge, but she passed him boldly, leaving him trembling with fear and gray with terror; and, marching fearlessly up to the kitchen door with a challenging giggle, she thrust the basket of clean clothes through it and under Eunice's very nose. Then she turned deliberately and flaunted off, with a loud laugh of scornful, mocking defiance.

For an instant the black widow was daunted, overwhelmed, dumfounded, utterly routed, by the brown girl's unexpected and brazen audacity. She could do nothing at first but stand glaring after her in dumb, powerless fury. Enoch had disappeared as though he had sunk into the earth; as more self-possessed and more courageous men have done under similar circumstances. Eunice, thus left alone, could only gather her self-possession gradually, as best she could, and try to think, and think, and think. She still kept perfectly quiet; there was not one outward sign of the turmoil of her fierce spirit. She thought and waited till night came on, and until her mistress had gone to bed, and even until she felt sure that old lady Gordon was sound asleep. And then, led by the blind instinct which leads the wild animal through the trackless forest in search of its mate, Eunice stealthily opened the door of her solitary cabin, and noiselessly went forth. She crossed the shadowed orchard through the soundless darkness, a black and terrible shape of vengeance, and crept softly, her bare, heavy feet padding like the paws of a tiger, on and on, straight to the bower.

What happened then only the rivals ever knew. Enoch Cotton himself did not know. He fled at the first onslaught, as braver and whiter men have done under the same desperate and hopeless conditions; he—and they—could do nothing else; could not prevent the conflict, and could not take part. Enoch could only take refuge in instantaneous and wordless flight.

Neither Eunice nor Merica had ever a word to say of what transpired after Enoch was gone and they were left alone to have their wild, furious will of each other. The wrecked bower, of which hardly one pole remained upon another or one vine clung untorn from the others, silently told a part of the story. Eunice's face looked like a red map of darkest Africa, and Merica's face was much mottled by deep blue bruises; Eunice limped about her work on the following morning, and Merica cooked breakfast with one hand, having the other in a sling. And still, oddly enough, neither Eunice nor Merica bore herself quite as the victorious nor yet quite as the vanquished. There was, in truth, an air of tense uncertainty on both sides. Nowadays, everybody would know what was to follow under such circumstances; both sides nowadays would make instantaneous and vociferous appeal to the law as soon as the court was open. But things were different then, and this special case was peculiarly complicated. Eunice was a slave and had consequently no clearly discernible individual rights or privileges under the law. Merica on the other hand was free, and this fact, while placing her socially far beneath Eunice, gave her, nevertheless, certain rights before the courts which her rival as a slave could not enjoy. Accordingly it was with pride and satisfaction unspeakable that Merica set out, unobserved, soon after breakfast, to do what Eunice fully expected her to do, which was, to swear out a warrant for Eunice's arrest. This legal formula was, however, known to Eunice and to Merica, as it is known to most litigants of their race to-day, as a "have-his-carcass," which sounds to be a much larger and a much graver thing. Having, then, seen this document safe in the constable's hand, and having been duly assured of its prompt service, Merica went home as quietly as she had come away, and slid unseen through a hole in the fence, soothed by the completeness of the legal victory which she foresaw, and which could not fail to make her the admired and envied of all her race, which then found—as it still finds—a strange distinction in any sort of legal recognition, either good or bad.

The officer nevertheless took his own time in serving the warrant. It was not the Oldfield way to hurry over the doing of anything. Moreover, he had, perhaps, had a rather wide experience of colored quarrels, notwithstanding the fact that they were brought into court much more rarely at that period than they have been since. And then, no one, however daring or energetic, ever hastened under any circumstances to interfere with the old lady Gordon's affairs. Was it not known—as has been related—that when Alvarado himself dashed along the big road and everybody else drove into the fence-corner till he went by, old lady Gordon always kept straight along the middle of the big road, and it was Alvarado that went round. Bearing this recollection in mind, the constable strolled very slowly down the highway toward the Gordon place, and he was glad to catch sight of Eunice in the garden, gathering vegetables for dinner. It was better than finding her nearer her mistress. He laid his hands on the top of the garden fence and swung himself over the pickets.

"Good morning, Eunice," he said, walking toward her between the tall rows of yellow-flowering okra, from which she was picking tender green pods, for a delicious soup which only herself knew the recipe for.

"Good morning, Mr. Jim," responded Eunice, calmly. She knew at once what he had come for. There was a nice distinction in her calling him "Mr. Jim," rather than "Marse Jim," a subtle social distinction which was quite as clear to the constable as to herself, and one which he did not like.

"I've got a warrant here for your arrest for attempted murder," he accordingly said somewhat less mildly. "You'll have to come along with me to jail."

"Yes, sir," answered Eunice, respectfully, but adding calmly, as if stating an accepted and unalterable fact: "Yes, sir, but in course I'll have to ask Miss Frances first. I can't stop a-gathering her vegetables while the dew's on 'em—lessen she say so. You know that, Mr. Jim, just as well as I do. Miss Frances's vegetables ain't to be left a-layin' round to swivel in the sun—no, sir, they ain't!"

The officer hesitated; he took off his rough straw hat, and looked for a moment as if he meant to scratch his head. But remembering the dignity of office, he fanned himself instead. "Well, come on up to the house, then, and I'll speak to your mistress," he said, with more composure than he felt.

They turned toward the house, the officer leading the way, and Eunice walking in her proper place behind him, carrying in her large, clean, white apron the okra, the beets, the cucumbers, and tomatoes, and all the other fresh and good, green and red things which she had already gathered for the daily noontide feast.

Old lady Gordon's keen eyes caught a glimpse of the constable and the cook a long way off; and she hailed them sharply as soon as they were within hearing: "What's this? What are you doing, Eunice? What are you here for, Jim, at this time of day?"

The officer, a good-looking, good-humored young giant, bared his head with an embarrassed smile. He made a brief explanation, turning his hat in his awkward hands, and resting his huge bulk first on one foot and then on the other.

Old lady Gordon hardly allowed him to finish what he found to say, which was very little. "Now, what's the use of your telling me any such nonsense as that, Jim Slocum? You know I'm not going to let you come here, interfering with my cook's getting my dinner."

"Yes, ma'am," said Jim, deferentially. "I do hate to inconvenience you, ma'am. But you see, ma'am, there's the law and here's the warrant. I'm bound to do what the law requires—I'll have to serve it."

"Indeed, you won't do anything of the kind! Who ever heard of such impudence!" exclaimed old lady Gordon. "The very idea! Taking my cook away from getting my dinner to lock her up in jail! Upon my word, Jim Slocum, I thought you had some sense. But I'm not going to allow you to annoy me or get me stirred up on a warm morning like this. I'm not even going to discuss the matter. Just you run along now, Jim, that's a good fellow, and let Eunice alone—she's busy—and don't bother me any more."

She settled herself back in her wide, low chair, and began to wave the turkey-wing fan with one hand, turning the leaves of her novel with the other.

"But you see, ma'am, it's a mighty grave charge, attempted murder,—the state—"

"Grave fiddlesticks!" retorted old lady Gordon, looking up from her novel with real fire blazing now in her fine dark eyes. "The state!" with infinite scorn. "What difference would it make to me if it were the United States? I tell you I won't have another word!"

Her raised voice, the lower tone of the officer's mild, but firm, persistence, the hurried gathering and smothered whispering of the servants around the windows and doors, all these combined had finally attracted the attention of Lynn Gordon, who was absorbed in reading in his own room overhead, and he now came hurrying downstairs. Entering his grandmother's room, he looked in surprise at the group which he found there; at her, at the constable, and lastly at Eunice, who had stood quietly by throughout the whole controversy with the manner of a coolly disinterested spectator. The officer turned eagerly to Lynn with the relief that every man feels upon the entrance of another man into a difficult business transaction with women.

"Maybe you can persuade your grandmother to let Eunice go," the constable said, addressing him, when a few words had made the matter clear to Lynn. "It is really the quickest way to get her cook back. The county judge is in town; I saw him tying his horse to the tavern hitching-post as I passed coming down here. He'd hurry up the case and get it over in no time to accommodate your grandma, being as they're kinder kin—him and your grandma's folks."

"Mr. Slocum is right, grandmother. That is certainly the quickest way, and the easiest," Lynn said. "Let Eunice go and I'll defend her; I'll take her as my first case,—shall I?" he added smilingly, looking at old lady Gordon.

"I don't care what any of you do, so long as you let me alone and have Eunice back here in time to get my dinner. What have you been up to, anyway?" she said, suddenly turning to Eunice as if the nature of the charge had just occurred to her for the first time. "Well, you'd better be back in plenty of time to boil that blackberry roll, that's all I've got to say to you. Lynn, send somebody to tell Davy,—that's the judge, Judge Thompson,—to tell Davy Thompson that I would be much obliged if he would go to the court-house at once and get this bother over, so that Eunice may be back within an hour. Please ask him to take the trouble to hurry; tell him I asked it. Send Enoch Cotton—where is Enoch, anyway?" she said, glancing over the assemblage of black masks crowding the windows and doors.

Enoch—naturally enough—was not to be found then nor for hours afterward, but another servant was despatched running in his stead; and then the procession moved briskly out through the side gate and on up the big road toward the court-house. Eunice walked behind the officer as manners required, but there was nothing abject in her carriage. She held her head high, feeling glad that she happened to be wearing her gayest bandanna head-handkerchief and that her white apron was still spotlessly clean. Hers was an imposing figure, and she knew it, and consequently bore herself with dignified pride. Her friends, too, began to flock around her as the procession advanced, thus swelling the crowd; and the white people living along the big road came to the doors and windows of their houses to see what was going on.

From the opposite direction approached a much larger and longer procession, headed by Merica, fairly flamboyant in an ecstasy of triumph, and tailed by dusky ragged figures, some of them little black children, trailing in the distance, indistinct as a smoky antique frieze. Merica's forces largely outnumbered Eunice's, as the attacking army nearly always outnumbers the defending force. Merica came marching at the very forefront, as if to the throb of inaudible drums and to the waving of invisible banners. Eunice trod more slowly, as the garrison goes cautiously to man the walls.

There was one tense, dangerous moment when the opposing forces met at the court-house steps; but the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the prisoner's counsel chanced, luckily, to arrive at the same instant, so that, owing to their restraining presence, the danger passed with no greater violence than an exchange of threatening glances between the contending parties. Side by side the furious factions crowded into the small court-room, and straightway the examining trial of Eunice for attempted murder was then and there begun, without an instant's delay.

And yet everything was done decently and in order. It was a complete surprise to the defence to find that the assault which had taken place in the butter-bean bower was entirely ignored in the indictment. The charge was that Eunice had put poison in the well from which Merica drew water, thereby attempting to kill, to murder, and to do deadly harm etc., to the plaintiff. The prosecuting witness testified that she had heard a noise about daylight; that on going to the well she had found an empty box, which she was certain had contained rat-poison, lying beside it; and that a white powder which she was mortally sure was the rat-poison itself—and nothing else—was plainly to be seen floating on the surface of the water. Such was the case made out by the prosecution. It was not at all what the defence was prepared for, but the prisoner's counsel showed himself to be a person of resources upon sudden demand. He readily admitted that the prosecuting witness might have heard a noise about daylight. There were, as he had himself observed, a great many cats in that part of the village. Also he admitted with equal readiness that she might have found an empty box which had once contained a rat-poison. He pointed out the fact that this particular variety of rat-poison was in such general use in Oldfield,—where rat-poison was one of the necessities of life, not merely one of its luxuries,—that the empty boxes which had contained it were to be found almost anywhere. As for the alleged poison itself, which a notoriously untruthful and untrustworthy witness had just testified to seeing still afloat on the surface of the water in the well, after the acknowledged lapse of several hours—the court could judge the worth of that evidence without any assistance from the defence.

Here Mr. Pettus unexpectedly appeared in the court-room. He kept the rat-poison, as he kept everything in daily Oldfield demand, and he had been hurriedly summoned as an expert witness for the defence, and he now took the stand. He testified to having handled that particular variety of rat-poison in very large quantities for many years. He claimed, on cross-examination, to be perfectly familiar with the kind of box used by the manufacturers of the rat-poison, and he gave it as his opinion that the particular box in question—the one which he then held in his hand, and which he was examining minutely—had been used for several other purposes, and harmless ones, apparently, since being emptied of its original deadly contents. He called the attention of the court to the fact that a particle of sugar still adhered to one corner, while a grain of coffee still lingered in another corner. Finally, when the prisoner's counsel was quite ready for the grand stroke, he allowed the witness—who was an amateur chemist in the line of his business—to testify from his own personal knowledge of the rat-poison that it dissolved instantly upon coming in contact with water.

"And yet, your Honor, the prosecution rests its case upon the testimony of an ignorant, vindictive savage, who swears—who solemnly testifies under oath, your Honor—that she saw this identical poison, and no other, floating on the surface of the water in the well several hours after she claims to have heard a noise; that it was there, plainly to be seen, several hours after my innocent client is known to have been at work in her mistress's kitchen and was seen in her mistress's garden, openly and constantly in view of the whole community. I can summon any number of unimpeachable witnesses—"

"The declaration is dismissed. The complaint is denied for lack of evidence," said the judge, as seriously as possible. "Call the next case."

"You may go home now, Eunice," said Lynn, smiling.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," said Eunice, calm as ever, and deliberately dropping a clumsy courtesy.

She courtesied still more clumsily to the court and to Mr. Pettus, and to all the white persons present, and then she turned slowly and ponderously, like some large and heavy royal personage, and she cast openly a high glance of infinite scorn over the humbled heads of her enemies. They might flock like coal-black crows as much as they had a mind to, she remarked in the dialect which they best understood; they were no more to her than the dust of the big road which she had "trompled under foot." She had white folks for her friends, she said triumphantly. With this single parting volley she went slowly and calmly down the court-house steps and set off homeward, bearing herself with all the arrogance of Semiramis returning victorious to Nineveh.

"Well, so you are back in time! No," said old lady Gordon, holding up the turkey-wing fan with a restraining gesture and resuming her novel with a yawn, "I don't want to hear a word about it. I know well enough that you ought to be in the penitentiary. Go on and get my dinner."

At the other end of the village Merica, deeply dejected, utterly crushed, stole toward home close in the shelter of the fence. She was returning entirely alone, as the leader of a lost cause nearly always returns, if he return at all. One by one her followers had dropped away, one disappearing here in a back yard, another vanishing there in a wood-lot, till all were gone. Desertion is the bitter hemlock of defeat that the vanquished are always forced to drink. The board was still off the fence at its farthest corner; Merica had squeezed through the hole on her flamboyant departure, so that Miss Judy might not see her and prevent her going; and she now dragged herself through it again on her downcast coming back, and thus reached the coveted shelter of her own domain and was able to hide her diminished head wholly unobserved by her unsuspicious, gentle little mistress.

"Merica's very quiet this morning. I haven't heard her stirring," Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia, as they sat placidly side by side in their little rocking-chairs—swaying gently—as they so loved to sit. They were talking, too, with that inexhaustible interest in one another's conversation which made their lifelong companionship the beautiful and perfect thing it was.

"Perhaps the poor creature is distressed over the falling down of the bower. She seemed to be real fond of it. And how strange to think there could have been such a violent storm without a drop of rain or our hearing the wind. I thought at first that we might have the bean-poles set up again, but the poles are broken and the vines are actually torn up by the roots. Oh, yes,—going back to what we were discussing before I happened to think of the bower,—I am sure that you are quite right in thinking that Doris's character has developed very rapidly of late. Her ideals really appear surprisingly well formed for so young a girl. And, as you say, there could hardly be anything unsettling now in her reading about the troubles that poor Becky went through. It can hardly do the dear child any harm now even to read about the mistakes which poor Becky made. For you know, sister Sophia, Becky was really good-hearted. You remember that Amelia might have gone sorrowing all her life, but for Becky's being so kind-hearted."

Miss Judy pleaded as though Miss Sophia was some keen and merciless critic from whose stern justice she strove gently to save the innocently erring.

"Just so, sister Judy," responded Miss Sophia, so promptly, so firmly, so comprehensively, so conclusively, that Miss Judy beamed at her, positively radiant with admiration, and sighed a deep sigh of relief and satisfaction at having the long and sorely vexing question thus thoroughly disposed of at last.