Free On Kingdom Mountain by Howard Frank Mosher Page B

o’clock tomorrow morning, gentlemen. Sharp.”

12
    H ALF the population of the village traipsed out to Kingdom Mountain the next day to participate in the reforestation project, and for once the weather on the mountain cooperated. It was warm and clear, a perfect day in early May.
    The reseeding crew was there by eight, along with Eben Kinneson Esquire. Judge Ira Allen, in his hiking boots and a lumber jacket, worked as hard as anyone. The crew pulled the evergreen slash out of the brook, dumped several wagonloads of clean gravel into the river, filled in the ruts on the cutover hillside, seeded it down with wild grass seed, and planted new fir and spruce seedlings. Eben worked side by side with Miss Jane, Judge Allen, and numerous Commoners. Henry Satterfield, in his gleaming white suit, watched the entire proceedings with a bemused expression. At noon Miss Jane fed everyone baked beans, fried chicken, pickles, homemade bread, and her famous no-egg chocolate wonder cake. The day had the gala air of a barn-raising bee.
    That evening, after everyone else had gone home, Judge Allen showed up on Miss Jane’s porch with an old bitters bottle he’d found near the Gate to Canada. In it he’d arranged a few yellow woods violets and white and pink spring beauties. Henry saw the judge coming as he was headed out to the barn to inventory the parts he would need to repair his biplane.
The aviator slipped inside the woodshed, leaving the door ajar, while Miss Jane and Ira met on the porch near Jane’s Virginia creeper.
    â€œJane,” the judge said, “I want you to know that I expect nothing. Nor did I expect anything when I was considering your case or helping replant your trees. But if you’re ever inclined to look down at the village from my home on Anderson Hill, I’d be the happiest man in Kingdom County.”
    â€œWhy,” Miss Jane said after a slight hesitation, “you’re a dear old fool, Ira Allen, and come to think of it, I’m no better. What, pray, would a hardscrabble hill farmer like me do with a home in the village? These days I scarcely know what to do with my own home. Still, I thank you kindly for the offer.”
    There was a lingering moment of silence. Henry peered around the corner of the shed door, but Miss Jane and the judge had stepped out of his line of view behind the creeper.
    That night, however, after they had retired for the evening, Miss Jane called up to Henry in his upstairs room through a hole in the ceiling of her bedchamber, “I have an admission to make to you, Mr. Satterfield.”
    The hole, fitted with an iron grating that could be opened from Henry’s room to admit heat rising from the chamber below, seemed to amplify their voices.
    â€œAn admission, Miss Jane?”
    â€œYes. Some time ago, I mentioned to you that Judge Allen and I were school chums.”
    â€œYou did. No one who didn’t know would ever guess it, though. You look, if I may say so, twenty years younger than the judge.”
    â€œPshaw. But it is time for me to ’fess up. Judge Allen and I were not merely school chums. He was, for a time, my admirer.”
    â€œI can easily believe that, ma’am.”
    â€œOne of several.”
    â€œI believe that, as well.”
    â€œI was too proud, however, to encourage them. In the case of young Ira, who was a fine lad and has certainly turned into a fine man, I was half again too proud to declare myself to him. He married someone else and, though she died recently, I think they were happy together. I also think that he never entirely forgot me.”
    â€œI think so, too, Miss Jane,” Henry said gallantly. “I do think so, too.”
    â€œThank you again, sir. But why, then, didn’t I accept Judge Allen’s offer tonight? Don’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping. I know better. I would have been eavesdropping had the situation been reversed.”
    â€œI don’t know