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Now I was filled with admiration for the physical prowess of this man who could whip the intrepid constable, for in Malcolmville there was no one whom I held in so much awe as Byron Lukens. He was mighty in bulk; his voice was proportioned to his size; his words fitted his voice.
Just what happened I could not see, for I had to take myself to his mane again, and he held his terrific pace until we reached the pike, and along the pike to the fork where the road branched off to our farm. When he paused here it was to consider whether he would go on toward Malcolmville or into the quiet, shaded lane.
"It's all right now, Penelope," I cried, and I pointed to the two steeples of Malcolmville, and then led her eyes to the right to a long stone house, almost hidden in a clump of giant oaks. I could find it by our barn, for our barn would dominate any land.
Under the spell of his words an hour flew by, and then my mother led Penelope away to make her ready for the journey. She brought her back to us decked in a hat and frock born of many days of planning and three trips to the county town. The humble art of Malcolmville had not been intrusted with so important a commission as Penelope's best clothes.
As Harlansburg was far above Malcolmville, so ex-Judge Bundy was above Mr. Pound. He was not the creator of Harlansburg, but he was its providence. He owned the bank and the nail works, he was a patron of its churches, the leading figure at the bar, and a man of wonderful eloquence.
From the incompetence of Prince Charlie, then, it came that my mother entered life in a red brick house in McLaurinville instead of in a highland keep, and as it is just six miles as the crow flies over the ridges to Malcolmville in Windy Valley, she met my father in the course of time, and in the course of time the two great families were united in my small self.
Our dreams are circumscribed by our experience, and in those days it had been inconceivable to me that she should grow more lovely than Miss Mincer, the butcher's daughter, and I had pictured myself walking proudly through the streets of Malcolmville at the side of a tall, slender girl, her head crowned by a glazed black hat, her body incased in a tight-fitting jersey.
To Nathan, the white mule, I owed it that I was able to take good care of Penelope Blight in the first hours of my guardianship. But for him I should have brought her face to face with the mob that rode out of Malcolmville to storm the clearing. I knew but one road home from the gut, and that was the way James had brought me fishing.
It waited to receive me. But the David Malcolm who stood bewildered in the streets was not the conqueror who had stepped ashore from the ferry-boat. The life a moment ago so precious had suddenly lost its value in the eyes of the unknowing. Yesterday he had walked through Malcolmville, and every man, woman and child in its straggling length had come out to bid him farewell.
"Joe Hicks," she said, pronouncing the name as though it were that of some dear friend suddenly dragged out of the by-gone years. "Surely not the same Joe Hicks who used to let us ride with him sometimes from Malcolmville out to the farm?"
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