THE great fluted pillars in Ramoth church were taken away. They interfered with the view and rental of the pews behind them. Albion Dee was loud and persuasive for removing them, and Jay Dee secret, shy and resistant against it. That was their habit and method of hostility.

Then in due season Jay Dee rented the first seat in the pew in front of Albion's pew. This was thought to be an act of hostility, subtle, noiseless, far-reaching.

He was a tall man, Jay Dee, and wore a wide flapping coat, had flowing white hair, and walked with a creeping step; a bachelor, a miser, he had gathered a property slowly with persistent fingers; a furtive, meditating, venerable man, with a gentle piping voice. He lived on the hill in the old house of the Dees, built in the last century by one “John Griswold Dee, who married Sarah Ballister and begat two sons,” who respectively begat Jay and Albion Dee; and Albion founded Ironville, three or four houses in the hollow at the west of Diggory Gorge, and a bolt and nail factory. He was a red-faced, burly man, with short legs and thick neck, who sought determined means to ends, stood squarely and stated opinions.

The beginnings of the feud lay backward in time, little underground resentments that trickled and collected. In Albion they foamed up and disappeared. He called himself modern and progressive, and the bolt and nail factory was thought to be near bankruptcy. He liked to look men in the eyes. If one could not see the minister, one could not tell if he meant what he said, or preached shoddy doctrine. As regards all view and rental behind him, Jay Dee was as bad as one of the old fluted pillars. Albion could not see the minister. He felt the act to be an act of hostility.

But he was progressive, and interested at the time in a question of the service, as respected the choir which sang from the rear gallery. It seemed to him more determined and effective to hymnal devotion that the congregation should rise and turn around during the singing, to the end that congregation and choir might each see that all things were done decently. He fixed on the idea and found it written as an interlinear to his gospels, an imperative codicil to the duty of man.

But the congregation was satiated with change. They had still to make peace between their eyes and the new slender pillars, to convince themselves by contemplation that the church was still not unstable, not doctrinally weaker.

So it came about that Albion Dee stood up sternly and faced the choir alone, with the old red, fearless, Protestant face one knows of Luther and Cromwell. The congregation thought him within his rights there to bear witness to his conviction. Sabbaths came and went in Ramoth peacefully, milestones of the passing time, and all seemed well.

Pseudo-classic architecture is a pale, inhuman allegory of forgotten meaning. If buildings like Ramoth church could in some plastic way assimilate their communicants, what gargoyles would be about the cornices, what wall paintings of patient saints, mystical and realistic. On one of the roof cornices of an old church in France is the carved stone face of a demon with horns and a forked tongue, and around its eyes a wrinkled smile of immense kindness. And within the church is the mural painting of a saint, some Beata Ursula or Catherine, with upturned eyes; a likeable girl, capable of her saintship, of turning up her eyes with sincerity because it fell to her to see a celestial vision; as capable of a blush and twittering laugh, and the better for her capabilities.

It is not stated what Albion symbolized. He stood overtopping the bonnets and the gray heads of deacons, respected by the pews, popular with the choir, protesting his conviction.

And all the while secretly, with haunch and elbow, he nudged, bumped and rubbed the shoulders and silvery head of Jay Dee. It is here claimed that he stood there in the conviction that it was his duty so to testify. It is not denied that he so bumped and squatted against Jay Dee, cautiously, but with relish and pleasure.

In the bowed silver head, behind the shy, persistent eyes of Jay Dee, what were his thoughts, his purposes, coiling and constricting? None but the two were aware of the locked throat grip of the spirit. In the droning Sabbath peace the congregation pursued the minister through the subdivisions of his text, and dragged the hymn behind the dragging choir.

It was a June day and the orioles gurgled their warm nesting notes in the maples. The boys in the gallery searched the surface of the quiet assembly for points of interest; only here and there nodding heads, wavering fans, glazed, abstracted eyes. They twisted and yawned. What to them were brethren in unity, or the exegesis of a text, as if one were to count and classify, prickle by prickle, to no purpose the irritating points of a chestnut burr? The sermon drowsed to its close. The choir and Albion rose. It was an outworn sight now, little more curious than Monday morning. The sunlight shone through the side windows, slanting down over the young, worldly and impatient, and one selected ray fell on Jay Dee's hair with spiritual radiance, and on Albion's red face, turned choirward for a testimony.

Suddenly Albion gave a guttural shout. He turned, he grasped Jay Dee's collar, dragged him headlong into the aisle, and shook him to and fro, protesting, “You stuck me! I'll teach you!”

His red face worked with passion; Jay Dee's venerable head bobbed, helpless, mild, piteous. The choir broke down. The minister rose with lifted hands and open mouth, the gallery in revelry, the body of the church in exclamatory confusion. Albion saw outstretched hands approaching, left his enemy, and hat in hand strode down the aisle with red, glowering face, testifying, “He stuck me.”

Jay Dee sat on the floor, his meek head swaying dizzily.

On Monday morning Albion set out for Hamilton down the narrow valley of the Pilgrim River. The sudden hills hid him and his purposes from Ramoth. He came in time to sit in the office of Simeon Ballister, and Simeon's eyes gleamed. He took notes and snuffed the battle afar.

“Ha! Witnesses to pin protruding from coat in region adjoining haunch. Hum! Affidavits to actual puncture of inflamed character, arguing possibly venom of pin. Ha! Hum! Motive of concurrent animosity. A very respectable case. I will come up and see your witnesses—Ha!—in a day or two. Good morning.”

Ballister was a shining light in the county courts in those days, but few speak of him now. Yet he wrote a Life of Byron, a History of Hamilton County, and talked a half century with unflagging charm. Those who remember will have in mind his long white beard and inflamed and swollen nose, his voice of varied melody. Alien whiskey and natural indolence kept his fame local. His voice is silent forever that once rose in the court-rooms like a fountain shot with rainbow fancies, in musical enchantment, in liquid cadence. “I have laid open, gentlemen, the secret of a human heart, shadowed and mourning, to the illumination of your justice. You are the repository and temple of that sacred light. Not merely as a plaintiff, a petitioner, my client comes; but as a worshipper, in reverence of your function, he approaches the balm and radiance of that steadfast torch and vestal fire of civilization, an intelligent jury.” Such was Ballister's inspired manner, such his habit of rhythm and climax, whenever he found twenty-four eyes fixed on his swollen nose, the fiery mesmeric core of his oratory beaconing juries to follow it and discover truth.

But the Case of Dee v. Dee came only before a justice of the peace, in the Town Hall of Ramoth, and Justice Kernegan was but a stout man with hairy ears and round, spectacled, benevolent eyes. Jay Dee brought no advocate. His silvery hair floated about his head. His pale eyes gazed in mild terror at Ballister. He said it must have been a wasp stung Albion.

“A wasp, sir! Your Honor, does a wasp carry for penetration, for puncture, for malignant attack or justifiable defence, for any purpose whatsoever, a brass pin of palpable human manufacture, drawn, headed and pointed by machinery, such as was inserted in my client's person? Does the defendant wish your Honor to infer that wasps carry papers of brass pins in their anatomies? I will ask the defendant, whose venerable though dishonored head bears witness to his age, if, in his long experience, he has ever met a wasp of such military outfit and arsenal? Not a wasp, your Honor, but a serpent; a serpent in human form.”

Jay Dee had no answer to all this. He murmured—

“Sat on me.”

“I didn't catch your remark, sir.”

“Why, you see,” explained the Justice, “Jay says Albion's been squatting on him, Mr. Ballister, every Sunday for six months. You see, Albion gets up when the choir sings, and watches 'em sharp to see they sing correct, because his ear ain't well tuned, but his eye's all right.”

The Justice's round eyes blinked pleasantly. The court-room murmured with approval, and Albion started to his feet.

“Now don't interrupt the Court,” continued the Justice. “You see, Mr. Ballister, sometimes Jay says it was a wasp and sometimes he says it was because Albion squatted on him, don't you see, bumped him on the ear with his elbow. You see, Jay sets just in front of Albion. Now, you see—”

“Then, does it not appear to your Honor that a witness who voluntarily offers to swear to two contradictory explanations; first, that the operation in question, the puncture or insertion, was performed by a wasp; secondly, that, though he did it himself with a pin and in his haste allowed that pin in damnatory evidence to remain, it was because, he alleges, of my client's posture toward, and intermittent contact with him—does it not seem to your Honor that such a witness is to be discredited in any statement he may make?”

“Well, really, Mr. Ballister, but you see Albion oughtn't to've squatted on him.”

“I find myself in a singular position. It has not been usual in my experience to find the Court a pleader in opposition. I came hoping to inform and persuade your Honor regarding this case. I find myself in the position of being informed and persuaded. I hope the Court sees no discourtesy in the remark, but if the Court is prepared already to discuss the case there seems little for me to do.”

The Justice looked alarmed. He felt his popularity trembling. It would not do to balk the public interest in Ballister's oratory. Doubtless Jay Dee had stuck a pin into Albion, but maybe Albion had mussed Jay's hair and jabbed his ear, had dragged and shaken him in the aisle at least. The rights of it did not seem difficult. They ought not to have acted that way. No man has the right to sit on another man's head from the standpoint or advantage of his own religious conviction. Nor has a man a right to use another man for a pincushion whenever, as it may be, he finds something about him in a way that's like a pincushion. But Ballister's oratory was critical and important.

“Why,” said Kemegan hastily, “this Court is in a mighty uncertain state of mind. It couldn't make it up without hearing what you were going to say.”

Again the Court murmured with approval. Ballister rose.

“This case presents singular features. The secret and sunless caverns, where human motives lie concealed, it is the function of justice to lay open to vivifying light. Not only evil or good intentions are moving forces of apparent action, but mistakes and misjudgments. I conclude that your Honor puts down the defendant's fanciful and predatory wasp to the defendant's neglect of legal advice, to his feeble and guilty inepitude. I am willing to leave it there. I assume that he confesses the assault on my client's person with a pin, an insidious and lawless pin, pointed with cruelty and propelled with spite; I infer and understand that he offers in defence a certain alleged provocation, certain insertions of my client's elbow into the defendant's ear, certain trespasses and disturbance of the defendant's hair, finally, certain approximations and contacts between my client's adjacent quarter and the defendant's shoulders, denominated by him—and here we demur or object—as an act of sitting or squatting, whereby the defendant alleges himself to have been touched, grieved and annoyed. In the defendant's parsimonious neglect of counsel we generously supply him with a fair statement of his case. I return to my client.

“Your Honor, what nobler quality is there in our defective nature than that which enables the earnest man, whether as a citizen or in divine worship, whether in civil matters or religious, to abide steadfastly by his conscience and convictions. He stands a pillar of principle, a rock in the midst of uncertain waters. The feeble look up to him and are encouraged, the false and shifty are ashamed. His eye is fixed on the future. Posterity shall judge him. Small matters of his environment escape his notice. His mind is on higher things.

“I am not prepared to forecast the judgment of posterity on that point of ritualistic devotion to which my client is so devoted an advocate. Neither am I anxious or troubled to seek opinion whether my client inserted his elbow into the defendant's ear, or the defendant, maliciously or inadvertently, by some rotatory motion, applied, bumped or banged his ear against my client's elbow; whether the defendant rubbed or impinged with his head on the appendant coat tails of my client, or the reverse. I am uninterested in the alternative, indifferent to the whole matter. It seems to me an academic question. If the defendant so acted, it is not the action of which we complain. If my client once, twice, or even at sundry times, in his stern absorption, did not observe what may in casual accident have taken place behind, what then? I ask your Honor, what then? Did the defendant by a slight removal, by suggestion, by courteous remonstrance, attempt to obviate the difficulty? No! Did he remember those considerate virtues enjoined in Scripture, or the sacred place and ceremony in which he shared? No! Like a serpent, he coiled and waited. He hid his hypocrisy in white hairs, his venomous purpose in attitudes of reverence. He darkened his morbid malice till it festered, corroded, corrupted. He brooded over his fancied injury and developed his base design. Resolved and prepared, he watched his opportunity. With brazen and gangrened pin of malicious point and incensed propulsion, with averted eye and perfidious hand, with sudden, secret, backward thrust, with all the force of accumulated, diseased, despicable spite, he darted like a serpent's fang this misapplied instrument into the unprotected posterior, a sensitive portion, most outlying and exposed, of my client's person.

“This action, your Honor, I conceive to be in intent and performance a felonious, injurious and sufficient assault. For this injury, for pain, indignity and insult, for the vindication of justice in state and community, for the protection of the citizen from bold or treacherous attack, anterior or posterior, vanguard or rear, I ask your Honor that damages be given my client adequate to that injury, adequate to that vindication and protection.”

So much and more Ballister spoke. Mr. Kernegan took off his spectacles and rubbed his forehead.

“Well,” he said, “I guess Mr. Ballister'll charge Albion about forty dollars—”

Ballister started up.

“Don't interrupt the Court. It's worth all that. Albion and Jay haven't been acting right and they ought to pay for it between 'em. The Court decides Jay Dee shall pay twenty dollars damages and costs.”

The court-room murmured with approval.

The twilight was gathering as Albion drove across the old covered bridge and turned into the road that leads to Ironville through a gloomy gorge of hemlock trees and low-browed rocks. The road keeps to the left above Diggory Brook, which murmurs in recesses below and waves little ghostly white garments over its waterfalls. Such is this murmur and the soft noise of the wind in the hemlocks, that the gorge is ever filled with a sound of low complaint. Twilight in the open sky is night below the hemlocks. At either end of the avenue you note where the light still glows fadingly. There lie the hopes and possibilities of a worldly day, skies, fields and market-places, to-days, to-morrows and yesterdays, and men walking about with confidence in their footing. But here the hemlocks stand beside in black order of pillars and whisper together distrustfully. The man who passes you is a nameless shadow with an intrusive, heavy footfall. Low voices float up from the pit of the gorge, intimations, regrets, discouragements, temptations.

A house and mill once stood at the lower end of it, and there, a century ago, was a wild crime done on a certain night; the dead bodies of the miller and his children lay on the floor, except one child, who hid and crept out in the grass; little trickles of blood stole along the cracks; house and mill blazed and fell down into darkness; a maniac cast his dripping axe into Diggory Brook and fled away yelling among the hills. Not that this had made the gorge any darker, or that its whispers are supposed to relate to any such memories. The brook comes from swamps and meadows like other brooks, and runs into the Pilgrim River. It is shallow and rapid, though several have contrived to fall and be drowned in it. One wonders how it could have happened. The old highway leading from Ramoth village to the valley has been grass-grown for generations, but that is because the other road is more direct to the Valley settlement and the station. The water of the brook is clear and pleasant enough. Much trillium, with its leaves like dark red splashes, a plant of sullen color and solitary station, used to grow there, but does so no more. Slender birches now creep down almost to the mouth of the gorge, and stand with white stems and shrinking, trembling leaves. But birches grow nearly everywhere.

Albion drove steadily up the darkened road, till his horse dropped into a walk behind an indistinguishable object that crept in front with creaking wheels. He shouted for passage and turned into the ditch on the side away from the gorge. The shadowy vehicle drifted slantingly aside. Albion started his horse; the front wheels of the two clicked, grated, slid inside each other and locked. Albion spoke impatiently. He was ever for quick decisions. He backed his horse, and the lock became hopeless. The unknown made no comment, no noise. The hemlocks whispered, the brook muttered in its pit and shook the little white garments of its waterfalls.

“Crank your wheel a trifle now.”

The other did not move.

“Who are you? Can't ye speak?”

No answer.

Albion leaned over his wheel, felt the seat rail of the other vehicle, and brought his face close to something white—white hair about the approximate outline of a face. By the hair crossed by the falling hat brim, by the shoulders seen vaguely to be bent forward, by the loose creaking wheels of the buck-board he knew Jay Dee. The two stood close and breathless, face to face, but featureless and apart by the unmeasured distance of obscurity.

Albion felt a sudden uneasy thrill and drew back. He dreaded to hear Jay Dee's spiritless complaining voice, too much in the nature of that dusky, uncanny place. He felt as if something cold, damp and impalpable were drawing closer to him, whispering, calling his attention to the gorge, how black and steep! to the presence of Jay Dee, how near! to the close secret hemlocks covering the sky. This was not agreeable to a positive man, a man without fancies. Jay Dee sighed at last, softly, and spoke, piping, thin, half-moaning:

“You're following me. Let me alone!”

“I'm not following you,” said Albion hoarsely. “Crank your wheel!”

“You're following me. I'm an old man. You're only fifty.”

Albion breathed hard in the darkness. He did not understand either Jay Dee or himself. After a silence Jay Dee went on:

“I haven't any kin but you, Albion, except Stephen Ballister and the Winslows. They're only fourth cousins.”

Albion growled.

“What do you mean?”

“Without my making a will it'd come to you, wouldn't it? Seems to me as if you oughtn't to pester me, being my nearest kin, and me, I ain't made any will. I got a little property, though it ain't much. 'Twould clear your mortgage and make you easy.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Twenty dollars and costs,” moaned Jay Dee. “And me an old man, getting ready for his latter end soon. I ain't made my will, either. I ought to've done it.”

What could Jay Dee mean? If he made no will his property would come to Albion. No will made yet. A hinted intention to make one in favor of Stephen Ballister or the Winslows. The foundry was mortgaged.—Jay was worth sixty thousand. Diggory Gorge was a dark whispering place of ancient crime, of more than one unexplained accident. The hemlocks whispered, the brook gurgled and glimmered. Such darkness might well cloak and cover the sunny instincts that look upwards, scruples of the social daylight. Would Jay Dee trap him to his ruin? Jay Dee would not expect to enjoy it if he were dead himself. But accidents befall, and men not seldom meet sudden deaths, and an open, free-speaking neighbor is not suspected. Success lies before him in the broad road.

It rushed through Albion's mind, a flood, sudden, stupefying—thoughts that he could not master, push back, or stamp down.

He started and roused himself; his hands were cold and shaking. He sprang from his buggy and cried angrily:

“What d'ye mean by all that? Tempt me, a God-fearing man? Throw ye off'n the gorge! Break your old neck! I've good notion to it, if I wasn't a God-fearing man. Crank your wheel there!”

He jerked his buggy free, sprang in, and lashed his horse. The horse leaped, the wheels locked again. Jay Dee's buckboard, thrust slanting aside, went over the edge, slid and stopped with a thud, caught by the hemlock trunks. A ghostly glimmer of white hair one instant, and Jay Dee was gone down the black pit of the gorge. A wheezing moan, and nothing more was heard in the confusion. Then only the complaining murmur of the brook, the hemlocks at their secrets.

“Jay! Jay!” called Albion, and then leaped out, ran and whispered, “Jay!”

Only the mutter of the brook and the shimmer of foam could be made out as he stared and listened, leaning over, clinging to a tree, feeling about for the buckboard. He fumbled, lit a match and lifted it. The seat was empty, the left wheels still in the road. The two horses, with twisted necks and glimmering eyes, were looking back quietly at him, Albion Dee, a man of ideas and determination, now muttering things unintelligible in the same tone with the muttering water, with wet forehead and nerveless hands, heir of Jay Dee's thousands, staring down the gorge of Diggory Brook, the scene of old crime. He gripped with difficulty as he let himself slide past the first row of trees, and felt for some footing below. He noticed dully that it was a steep slope, not a precipice at that point. He lit more matches as he crept down, and peered around to find something crushed and huddled against some tree, a lifeless, fearful thing. The slope grew more moderate. There were thick ferns. And closely above the brook, that gurgled and laughed quietly, now near at hand, sat Jay Dee. He looked up and blinked dizzily, whispered and piped:

“Twenty dollars and costs! You oughtn't to pester me. I ain't made my will.”

Albion sat down. They sat close together in the darkness some moments and were silent.

“You ain't hurt?” Albion asked at last. “We'll get out.”

They went up the steep, groping and stumbling.

Albion half lifted his enemy into the buckboard, and led the horse, his own following. They were out into the now almost faded daylight. Jay sat holding his lines, bowed over, meek and venerable. The front of his coat was torn. Albion came to his wheel.

“Will twenty dollars make peace between you and me, Jay Dee?”

“The costs was ten,” piping sadly.

“Thirty dollars, Jay Dee? Here it is.”

He jumped into his buggy and drove rapidly. In sight of the foundry he drew a huge breath.

“I been a sinner and a fool,” and slapped his knee. “It's sixty thousand dollars, maybe seventy. A self-righteous sinner and a cocksure fool. God forgive me!”

Between eight and nine Jay Dee sat down before his meagre fire and rusty stove, drank his weak tea and toasted his bread. The windows clicked with the night wind. The furniture was old, worn, unstable, except the large desk behind him full of pigeonholes and drawers. Now and then he turned and wrote on scraps of paper. Tea finished, he collected the scraps and copied:

Mr. Stephen Ballister: I feel, as growing somewhat old, I ought to make my will, and sometime, leaving this world for a better, would ask you to make my will for me, for which reasonable charge, putting this so it cannot be broken by lawyers, who will talk too much and are vain of themselves, that is, leaving all my property of all kinds to my relative, James Winslow of Wimberton, and not anything to Albion Dee; for he has not much sense but is hasty; for to look after the choir is not his business, and to sit on an old man and throw him from his own wagon and pay him thirty dollars is hasty, for it is not good sense, and not anything to Stephen Ballister, for he must be rich with talking so much in courts of this world. Put this all in my will, but if unable or unwilling on account of remorse for speaking so in the court, please to inform that I may get another lawyer. Yours,

Jay Dee.

He sealed and addressed the letter, put it in his pocket, and noticed the ruinous rent in his coat. He sighed, murmured over it complainingly, and turned up the lapel of the coat. Pins in great variety and number were there in careful order, some new, some small, some long and old and yellow. He selected four and pinned the rent together, sighing. Then he took three folded bills from his vest pocket, unfolded, counted and put them back, felt of the letter in his coat gently, murmured, “I had the best of Albion there; I had him there,” took his candle and went up peacefully and venerably to bed.