The Place Beyond the Winds | Page 4

the small, fat mustard jar which always graced
the middle of the dining table. They had once told her that the contents
of the jar "were not for little girls."
They had been mistaken. She had investigated, suffered, and learned!
Well, she was ready to suffer--but learn she must!
Nathaniel shook his head and set forth his scheme of life for her, briefly
and clearly.
"You'll have nothing but woman ways--bad enough you need
them--they will tame and keep you safe. You'll marry early and find
your pleasure and duty in your home."
Priscilla turned without another word, but there was an ugly line
between her eyes.
That night and the next she took the matter before a higher judge, and
fervently, rigidly prayed. On the third night she pronounced her
ultimatum. Kneeling by the tiny gable window of her grim little
bedchamber, her face strained and intense, her big eyes fixed on a red,
pulsing planet above the hemlocks outside, she said:
"Dear God, I'll give you three days to move his stony heart to let me go
to school; if you don't do it by then, I'm going to worship graven
images!"
Priscilla at that time was eight, and three days seemed to her a generous
time limit. But Nathaniel's stony heart did not melt, and at the end of
the three days Priscilla ceased to pray for many and many a year, and
forthwith she proceeded to worship a graven image of her own

creation.
A mile up the grassy road, beyond Lonely Farm and on the way toward
the deep woods, was an open space of rich, red rock surrounded by a
soft, feathery fringe of undergrowth and a few well-grown trees. From
this spot one could see the Channel widened out into the Little Bay: the
myriad islands, and, off to the west, the Secret and Fox Portages,
beyond which lay the Great Bay, where the storms raged and the
wind--such wind as Kenmore never knew--howled and tore like a
raging fiend!
In this open stretch of trees and rock Priscilla set up her own god. She
had found the bleached skull of a cow in one of her father's pastures;
this gruesome thing mounted upon a forked stick, its empty eye-sockets
and ears filled with twigs and dried grasses, was sufficiently pagan and
horrible to demand an entirely unique form of worship, and this
Priscilla proceeded to evolve. She invented weird words, meaningless
but high-sounding; she propitiated her idol with wild dances and an
abandon of restraint. Before it she had moments of strange silence
when, with wonder-filled eyes, she waited for suggestion and
impression by which to be guided. Very young was she when
intuitively she sensed the inner call that was always so deeply to sway
her. Through the years from eight to fourteen Priscilla worshipped
more or less frequently before her secret shrine. The uncanny ceremony
eased many an overstrained hour and did for the girl what should have
been done in a more normal way. The place on the red rock became her
sanctuary. To it she carried her daily task of sewing and dreamed her
long dreams.
The Glenns rarely went to church--the distance was too great--but
Nathaniel, looming high and stern across the table in the bare kitchen,
morning and night, set forth the rigid, unlovely creed of his belief. This
fell upon Priscilla's unheeding ears, but the hours before the shrine
were deeply, tenderly religious, although they were bright and merry
hours.
Of course, during the years, there were the regular Kenmore
happenings that impressed the girl to a greater or lesser degree, but they

were like pictures thrown upon a screen--they came, they went, while
her inner growth was steady and sure.
Two families, one familiar and commonplace, the other more mystical
than anything else, interested Priscilla mightily during her early youth.
Jerry and Michael McAlpin, with little Jerry-Jo, the son of old Jerry,
were vital factors in Kenmore. They occupied the exalted position of
rural expressmen, and distributed, when various things did not interfere,
the occasional freight and mail that survived the careless methods of
the vicinity.
The McAlpin brothers were hard drinkers, but they were most
considerate. When Jerry indulged, Michael remained sober and steady;
when Michael fell before temptation, Jerry pulled himself together in a
marvellous way, and so, as a firm, they had surmounted every inquiry
and suspicion of a relentless government and were welcomed far and
wide, not only for their legitimate business, but for the amount of
gossip and scandal they disbursed along with their load. Jerry-Jo, the
son of the older McAlpin, was four years older than Priscilla and was
the only really young creature who had ever entered her life intimately.
The other family, of whom the girl thought vaguely,