"No true love there can be,Without its dread penalty, jealousy!"
"No true love there can be,Without its dread penalty, jealousy!"
A grateful odor from the white blooming wild cherry by the fence of the James potato-lot, was wafted to Miss Lucy, as, with her milk-buckets she came out into the dew-wet yard at five o'clock one morning well on toward the end of May. But she was not cognizant of its sweetness. Her face was pale, restless—harassed, as she paused a moment with her eyes on the sloping plowed fields across the road. The tobacco barn of Castle with its metal roof shimmered like silver in the bright sun: the fields showed flecks of green on their raw brown,—the newly set tobacco.
"I reckon he's a settin' tobacco, too, 'way down that away," she mused sorrowfully, turning her face toward the north: "and maybe he'll overwork and make hisse'f sick. I wisht I could hear from him some way. I ain't heard sence Pa—sence Pa ordered him never to come about us any more! Seems like he might write, but he's afraid of gittin' me in trouble, I guess, ef he sent me a letter through the mail. Pa and Nancy'd—"
The spider curled on the web that hung from the top rail of the gate to the post, felt a heavy drop on his back, and pirouetted away in fright. But a long mournful bellow from beyond the barn prevented the fall of any more drops on his web.
"Poor old Belle! She must be a gittin' worse," thought Miss Lucy, hurrying to the barn-lot, in which, the night before, she had left the roan cow that for more than a week had drooped and languished. To her surprise, the cow was pacing back and forth, restless as something caged, while the other cattle in the adjoining grass field, clustered not far from the boundary fence, regarding their sick mate in a peculiar, half-fearful fashion. Miss Lucy set down her buckets, and flew to the house.
"O Pa!" she cried: "I wisht you'd come down to the barn a minute. Old Belle's worse, I believe, and she's actin' so strange I am afraid to milk the other cows in the lot with her!"
"Aw, she won't hurt ye, Lucy," grumbled the old man, rising reluctantly. "Have the mar's come up to be fed yit?"
When Mr. James had seen the sick beast, he was much vexed.
"The best cow on the place, exceptin' the one you claim, Lucy Ann, and me not able to work with her! Now as soon as you git the milkin' done, and eat, you go git old man Doggett. Maybehecan do somethin' fer her."
Not for many weeks had Miss Lucy been allowed at the Doggetts. Mr. Lindsay kept his trunk there, and came back occasionally. This Miss Nancy knew, and though she was quite happy in the thought that Mr. Lindsay, in his anger toward her father, had given up Miss Lucy, she reasoned that if Miss Lucy were allowed to go to the Doggetts, it were possible she might sometime see him there, and the spell of his anger might be broken. So Mr. James, instructed by his youngest daughter, had ordered Miss Lucy to keep away from the Doggetts.
"People'll be a talkin' about you, Lucy Ann, ef you go there," they had said, and Miss Lucy meekly accepted their dictum, and staid away.
"I don't know ef there ever was a woman situated like me," she thought to herself, as she ran down the familiar little path, "fifty years old—afraid of her folks—afraid to do like she wants to!"
A sob escaped her, a rebellious sob for the hard fate that rendered her path of love, one so stony.
"Jest look at these here plants, Ann. Ef I do say hit, I've got the purtiest plant beds in the country, and I've seed all the beds around whar they are a raisin' hit this year, and went to some purty night' over the Kentucky River country! Jest let a feller have the weather to sow his seed in February, and he'll shore have early plants!"
Mr. Doggett, who might have posed for a member of the Grallatores family, with his bare feet, and ungainly exposure of muddy red leg, coming into the yard with a great basket of newly pulled tobacco plants, was astonished to see Miss Lucy hurrying to meet him.
"Why, yes, sir, Miss Lucy," he acquiesced, hastily brushing off a little of the mud plastering from his lengthy stretch of blue overalls: "I'm shorely one the busy ones: got up at three this mornin', and won't git to tech bed 'tel nigh on to ten. Them two days' rain we had has give us a plantin' season right. Thar's enough wet in the ground fer four days, and ef we jest do the work, we'll have a fine set.
"A body has a heap to be thankful fer, now don't they? Me and my hands, we helped Jim a yistiddy and the day afore, and Jim and his hands is holpin'metoday, aimin' to git done by termorrer, so's not to have to do no Sunday plantin'."
When Mr. Doggett paused for breath, Miss Lucy, who was listening in a nervous tremor, jerked out her errand. Mr. Doggett's face fell.
"I don't see how I kin jest possible spare the time. I'm a payin' the hands eighteen cents a hour, andI'mall the one thar is to keep 'em in plants and time 'em. But I'll jest go anyhow fer a few minutes. A body ortn't to be selfish, no, sir. I'll jest step over to the field and take these plants to the boys. You jest tell your Pa I'll come right on. Maybe I'll git thar time you do, hit's so nigh from the patch. Jest speak to the old lady thar in the house,—maybe she'll try to hobble up thar with you."
The cow stood stolid and quiet, when the three reached the barn-yard, unheeding the attentions of Miss Nancy and her father, who were trying to persuade her to eat a steaming mash.
"Hain't you no idy what ails her, Mr. Jeemes?" asked Mr. Doggett, contemplating her heaving sides.
"I dunno," replied Mr. James, "onless she's a runnin' mad. About three weeks ago a strange dog come through the lot when Lucy Ann was a milkin', and instid o' rockin' hit,—Lucy Ann, she run and climbed up in the loft!"
"Pa, I was afraid of hit!" Miss Lucy defended. "Hit was a frothin' at hit's mouth," she explained to Mr. Doggett.
"When Lucy Ann clumb down," went on the old man, "the dog wuzn't nowher's in sight, and she couldn't tell whuther the cow wuz bit er not."
"Well, Mr. Jeemes": Mr. Doggett rubbed his mud-coated hands uncertainly together, "I dunno what to tell you. She hain't got no holler-horn, ner hain't down in her back, but I ondoubtedly believe she's in a dangerous fix."
"S'pose'n you send fer Mr. Brock, Mr. Jeemes," suggested Mrs. Doggett: "he'llknow ef anybody does what to do fer her!"
"That's right, Mr. Jeemes, yes, sir," affirmed Mr. Doggett: "Mr. Brock, he's got so many hands, he jest oversees. He don't work none hisse'f,—he don't have to work."
If there was a suspicion of irony in Mr. Doggett's voice, it was veiled from his hearers by the good-nature that habitually clothed his utterances.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Brock'll shorely be able to come, ef you send fer him, and I'll jest git 'long back to the boys!"
"I've got dinner to git," said Mrs. Doggett, as her husband disappeared in the direction of his barefooted assistants, "and ef thar's one time when men folks can lay in victuals faster'n another time, hit's at plantin' season! Stoopin' over sorter stretches their insides I reckon. And ef I didn't have dinner to git, thar'd be somethin' else to do. Whar you keep house, thar's always somethin' to do, and that a whole heap of hit! But I'll jest stay a while any way, and see how she gits."
Miss Nancy was dispatched on old Maude, the fattest of the two fat mares for Mr. Brock, with strict injunctions to ride slowly.
Though she had only a quarter of a mile to go, it was a full half hour before she returned with Mr. Brock, walking carefully and with mincing steps (because of the mud, and the extreme tightness of a new pair of summer tans), wearing his Sunday gray suit, a white shirt, collar, and tie, and carrying a gallon bucket full of ripe strawberries.
"I'd have been back sooner," explained Miss Nancy, "but Mr. Brock wouldn't come until he changed his clothes, and I had to help old Jane hunt their bottle of cow bitters."
"Hain't them nice!" Mrs. Doggett sniffed Mr. Brock's offering of fruit, in appreciation. "Miss Lucy, didn't I tell you, Mr. Brock was the nicest man out?"
"Hit's awful good of you, Mr. Brock, to breng 'em, and awful good of you to come," Miss Lucy tendered. "Maybe you can do somethin' for Pa's poor old cow!"
During Miss Nancy's absence, the watchers had gotten the sick beast in one of the double stalls, the inner of which was separated from the outer stall by a long pole having one end caught over a hook.
"Lucy Ann, take that bucket, and fill it with water and fetch that brass kittle in the barn," ordered her father: "that cow ort to be watered."
Miss Lucy drew a bucket of water from the cistern which covered with loose planks, stood on the upper side of the barn, and carried the water to the open door of the stall in which the cow stood quiet, with eyes downcast, and feet spread apart.
"I'll take the water in to her, Miss Lucy," volunteered Mr. Brock, lifting the kettle. Mr. James objected.
"The cow is used to Lucy, Mr. Brock, and she might show fight to you."
Obedient to her father's wishes, Miss Lucy shrinkingly pushed the kettle under the dividing pole, and poured the water into it, while Mr. Brock, with prudent forethought, picked up a thick stick and took a position in the doorway.
Suddenly the animal, hearing the splash of water, turned and unexpectedly lunged at the kettle. The dividing pole cracked under her onslaught. Miss Lucy started back with a scream, and fell violently. Mr. Brock thrust strongly at the cow as she rushed forward again, and the creature reeled back on her haunches. Before she could recover herself for another plunge, he had lifted Miss Lucy over the sill, and together, Miss Nancy and Mrs. Doggett had slammed the door, and thrust its iron bar in place.
"Lord!" shuddered Mrs. Doggett, "that wuz a narrer call!"
"Open the gate for me," wheezed the breathless Mr. Brock, staggering along with his limp burden on whose forehead appeared a little blood, trickling from a slight cut. "We'd better git her to the house quick!"
Miss Lucy, laid on the sitting-room lounge, presently revived and feebly murmured her distress at causing so much of trouble.
"Don't you thenk we'd better go back and doctor on the cow, Mr. Brock—give her them bitters, er somethin'?"
The old man's mind, his anxiety for his daughter relieved, presently turned again to his barn-yard patient.
"I'm afraid she's about past medicine," Mr. Brock regretted, placidly seating himself. "If you wish it, though, I'll stay and take a look at her ever' once and a while, and if there's no change by three o'clock, and you wish it, I'll send home for my rifle to shoot the poor creature."
Mrs. Doggett bent reluctant eyes on the clock.
"I'm bound to go," she declared,—"them hungry men—"
"Mrs. Doggett, don't you want some cabbage plants? Pa said we was done settin' yesterday," proffered Miss Lucy. Miss Nancy scowled.
"You've surely forgot about Miss Maude Floss engagin' some last week, Lucy," she reminded her. "But maybe she won't take 'em all," she conciliated.
"Cabbage!" Mrs. Doggett's voice rang out shrilly. "Miss Lucy, don't saycabbageto me! I hain't raised a stalk o' cabbage sence the summer Jim and Henrietty married. That year the cabbage snake come a one o' killin' us all! But hit shore wuz the cause o' Jim and Henrietty a marryin'."
"Was hit?" asked Miss Lucy, innocently, while Mr. Brock smiled at her over his former parent-in-law's head. Mrs. Doggett resumed her seat.
"Hit wuz one them awful hot days in June, and Henrietty wuz a visitin' my Hattie that day. Our cabbage wuz jest a comin' in, and late Meriller cherries wuz turnin'—jest ripe enough to taste good, and we all et a right smart o' cherries before dinner and we wuz all a talkin' about the cabbage snake skeer, and about hit a sickenin' people nigh to death when one got accidentally cooked with the cabbage. Eph, he didn't believe thar wuz no pizen snake on cabbage, but I wuz sorter oneasy when I put hit on the table,—the first mess we'd had.
"Jim, he wuz a workin' in Cincinnati that summer. He wanted to see some new people he said, and he seed enough of 'em.
"'Ma,' he says when he come home, 'them people up thar is so distant a turn, and so selfish, they never ask you to eat a meal o' victuals; and they don't have no bread fitten to eat. I hain't ketched sight of a hoe-cake o' corn bread, ner smelt a biscuit sence I've been gone!'
"I set dinner on the table at twelve, and before the long hand drapped to two, ever' soul of us but Eph wuz a doublin' up like figur' eights! Eph, he don't never eat cabbage ner cherries. He het water fer us, and doctered us up with mustard and red pepper, ontel we all got some better, then he set off to the still-house to git a little whiskey fer us.
"While we wuz at our worst, Henrietty she crawled to the table and writ a letter, and when Eph, he started she give hit to him to mail on the road. Hit wuz her dyin' farewell to Jim, beggin' him to meet her in heaven, ef she died!
"Henrietty had been a lovin' Jim a long time, and though she wuz mighty purty behaved—never runnin' after him ner nothin'—she told Hattie onct, ef she didn't git to marry Jim, whoever married her would marry her lovin' another man, and that man Jim Doggett! Jim, he never paid much 'tention to Henrietty though—never tuck no holt on her. Seemed like he fancied most any the other girls more, 'tel he got that letter. Then he come home on the next Sunday excursion, and 'twuzn't no time 'tel they married! My belief is they wouldn't never 'a' married, ef hit hadn't 'a' been fer the cabbage snake.
"Mr. Castle, he read them Gover'ment disports, and said they wuzn't no cabbage snake, but I pulled up ever' head and throwed 'em in the creek, so's not to resk anytheng else gittin' pizened! I'm as bad about cabbage, as Jim is about a black cat, and he wouldn't have a black cat to save your life! I hain't raised nary head sence, ner I hain't a goin' to!"
"Ef that's the way you feel about hit, I wouldn't, Mrs. Doggett," said Miss Lucy, kindly.
"Did Mr. Doggett git back with the whiskey?" asked Mr. Brock, as Mrs. Doggett once more arose to go.
"He never got back 'tel midnight," she answered, "and I hain't never tasted nary drap o'thatwhiskey yit!"
A hundred times since Mr. Lindsay had been commanded to hold no further communication with the James household, he had taken a pencil in his fingers to write to Miss Lucy: a dozen times had walked as far toward her home, as the great beech that stood by the dividing fence of James and Castle: more than once he had set his foot on the mossy fence, but every time, the wounded pride of his sensitive nature, whispering that she ought to write or contrive to see him if she still loved him, held his hand and stayed his foot.
But his heart was not obedient to the pride that ruled his hand, and his foot, and its daily cry refused to be stifled. Mrs. Doggett never failed to wound him by her hints about Mr. Brock and Miss Lucy, but he could not deprive himself of the uncertain consolation of hearing from her, through the Doggetts.
On the evening of this third day of the tobacco setting, Mr. Lindsay, muddy, tired, and footsore, walked in at the Doggett back door. Mrs. Doggett, for reasons, could have hugged herself when he appeared. Joey, while his mother did her after-supper kitchen work, gave a skeleton-like account of the excitement of the day to the new-comer, but Mrs. Doggett, when she was free, repeated the tale with embellishments for his benefit.
"I jest wisht you could 'a' seed that pore old cow, Mr. Lindsay, after she got to cuttin' up," she narrated gleefully. "After Mr. Brock come, Miss Lucy, by the old man's directions, ondertuck to water her. I seed Mr. Brock wuz uneasy, fer he picked up a old hickory hoe handle, and follered Miss Lucy in the stall. The pore creeter no sooner ketcht sight o' the water'n she tuck violent. She run at the brass kittle, and mashed hit flat as a batty-cake, and ef Mr. Brock hadn't kep' her off Miss Lucy with that stick, she'd 'a' horned her to death!"
"Why didn't Brock water her hisse'f?" demanded Mr. Lindsay, indignantly.
"He did want to: tuck the kittle in his hand to," defended Mrs. Doggett: "but the old man—he's childish you know—he 'lowed that the cow, bein' used to Miss Lucy, wouldn't hurt her. Mr. Brock, he gethered up Miss Lucy when she fell, and got out o' the stable mighty quick, and 'twuz all me and Miss Nancy could do to git the door shet and barred."
"Wuz Miss Lucy hurt?" Mr. Lindsay was very white.
"Naw, she wuz jest stunned and had a little scratch on the side o' her forehead whar her head hit the wall. Mr. Brock, he 'peared desp'rit oneasy about her, though. Kerried her ever' step o' the way to the house in his arms hisse'f—wouldn't let nobody tech her to help him kerry her! Watch out, Mr. Lindsay! Ef you don't quit a whittlin' so reckless, you'll cut your hand!
"Mr. Brock, he saved Miss Lucy's life shore, fer after they got out, the cow's eyes turned right green, and glared like a tagger's, and she tried to tear up ever'theng in sight! She tore down the rack, and bit the trough, and hooked in the ground, and flung the stable dirt plumb to the j'ist! Then she bawled and bawled the mournfulest you ever heerd!
"I asked Mr. Brock what he thought ailded her, and he said she wuz shore mad, and all he knowed to do fer her wuz to shoot her and put her out'n her misery! She wuz a gittin' more furiouser all the time when I left."
"Did Brock leave when you did?" asked Mr. Lindsay.
"No, indeed—he staid to dinner. Miss Nancy and her Pa, they looked like they wuz mighty pleased to have him! Miss Nancy, she went and killed a spreng chicken (one them fine black 'Nockers she's so choice of) and before I left she wuz a puttin' on some macaronian, and she knows how to cook hit too! I et some up thar onct—the first I ever et—all cooked up with aigs and cheese, and I thought hit wuz the best stuff I ever et. I took out twice, and I thenks to myse'f, 'ef I wuz out behind the house, I'd take all out!'
"When I left, Miss Lucy wuz a layin' on the divan sorter shuck up and weak, but talkin' to Mr. Brock cheerful. She wuz all over dirt when she fell, but she put on a purty palish blue kimonian when she come to, and Mr. Brock, he had on his good clothes, (actually wouldn't come down thar 'tel he put on his good clothes!) He wuz a takin' on about a pan o' wonderin' Jews she had a hangin' in the winder, and a pale yaller tea rose she'd got at the warm-house, a bein' so purty, 'as purty as their owner,' he says."
At this point Mrs. Doggett was so elated with the charm of the picture that her imagination had painted, that she could not resist giving it an additional touch.
"And Miss Lucy," she added, "she told him to git the clothes bresh out'n the press drawer, and bresh off the dust whar he had got hit on him at the barn, and then he might have one her roses to put in his button-hole."
Mr. Lindsay's cheeks became a gray-white. "I wouldn't thenk a man'd have much chance to be a primpin' up and visitin' on a rush time—a terbaccer settin' season," he remarked icily.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Lindsay, yes, sir,—croppin' and courtin' don't go together right handy, do they?" Mr. Doggett agreed with Mr. Lindsay.
At this moment, Dock, who had been so consumed with curiosity to know the fate of the cow, that he had forced his weary feet to walk to the James house, returned, bringing new information.
"Mr. Brock, he went home long in the evenin' to git Reub's rifle," he informed his questioners; "and when he come back 'bout an hour ago, he shot the cow. He's thar now and says fer as many of us as hain't too tired, to come up and help cut wood to burn the carkis. Says hit'll spread the mad all over the country ef dogs git any of hit!"
"I plumb hate to not go," remarked Mr. Doggett, rubbing one of his stiffened lower limbs: "Joey, can't you and Roscoe, and some you young fellers go and holp Mr. Brock out!"
"Hit looks more like imperdence than anytheng else, fer him to ask fellers as wore out as you all, to do any more work tonight! The theng fer you all to do is to go to bed, and let him peel off them Sundays, and be his own 'hewer o' wood,'" said Gran'dad, unfeelingly. Mr. Lindsay smiled in the dim light of the small lamp, and gave Gran'dad's lean arm a pinch of commendation.
"That's right, Gran'dad," he said: "ef Miss Lucy's beau wants to raise hisse'f in the estimation o' her family, by conductin' a cow-burnin' fer 'em, less don't bother him none; less jest let him have his cow-burnin', and all the pleasure and honor there is in hit to hisse'f!" And every tobacco-setter agreed.
On his way to the tobacco field next morning, Dock made it convenient to go by the way of the Jameses and the funeral pyre, and from him, Miss Lucy learned that Mr. Lindsay had passed the night at the Doggetts. Because of this information, she drove even more slowly than usual on her way to town.
"Perhaps," she thought hopefully, "he'll remember hit's my marketin' day, and maybe he'll walk to town and overtake me, and ride 'long to town with me. Hit surely wouldn't be no harm."
She looked from the glass in the back curtain of her buggy. Nobody was coming along the road toward her, but if her eyes and ears could have pierced three miles, they would have seen a slender, brown-eyed man, with a heart sore and full of rancor toward the world, going rapidly in the opposite direction, and would have heard him saying,—his voice wistful with the tears his pride would not allow his eyes to shed:
"They've set her ag'in me, I reckon, and hit looks like she's got to preferrin' Brock to me. Ef she has, she can have him; I won't stand in her way! But I wouldn't have thought hit of her, no I wouldn't, and hit's—O Lucy, hit's—hit's good bye to the home I laid out to have!"
"I am now in fortune's power,He that is down can fall no lower."
"I am now in fortune's power,He that is down can fall no lower."
"Fifty cents! I'm offered a half a dollar! Who'll make it three quarters?" The eyes of the sheriff twinkled, despite his efforts toward solemnity. It was the third Monday morning in August: he stood in front of the Court-house door, facing a "court-day" crowd and conducted the sale of Napper Dunaway, a gentleman afflicted with what the Court had diagnosed to be a case of chronic leisure.
Under the vagrancy law of the State, the remedy for this disease is the enforced sale of the patient's services for a given time,—the purchaser binding himself to furnish food, lodging, and medical attention to his bondman during the term of his compelled servitude.
The crowd pressed up for a nearer view of the young man, who, with a soft white thumb caught in the button-hole of a pale blue negligee shirt, worn in shirt-waist style, with a crimson silk tie, a tan belt, and a pair of blue serge pantaloons, stood in nonchalant contemplation of the church steeple across the street.
"Who'll give me three quarters of a dollar?" repeated the sheriff.
"I will: yes, sir, I'll make the bid seventy-five cents!" drawled a new-comer, slightly out of breath from his hurry to reach the scene of the sale.
Every eye turned toward the advancer of the bid,—a long man, with a wild red beard. For a few minutes, the bidding between Mr. Ephriam Doggett and a derisive competitor advanced by cents, and half-cents, but one dollar marked the end of the bids, and Mr. Doggett became, for the space of ten months, Dunaway's legal owner.
In the summers past, worms had been bad in the Kentucky tobacco fields, but this year, they came in numbers like the Assyrian army: by the middle of August, at the time of the leaving off of the spraying with Paris green, Mr. Doggett was, according to the words of his mouth, "in a tight place."
"Hands" were at a premium: his sons, Marshall and Jappy, had a crop of their own several miles off; Mr. Brock had slyly induced two of Mr. Doggett's "promised" men to stop with him: Mr. Doggett's aids—Dock, Joey, Gran'dad, the brothers, Bunch and Knox Trisler, and his cousins, Roscoe and Ob Doggett, numbered but seven, when there should have been ten, for the worming and the suckering.
Something had to be done, and on court day, with his seven left behind to do battle against the green army, Mr. Doggett went to town in search of a "hand." He heard on the street of the vagrancy sale, and seized the opportunity offered him to secure a free hireling. Time was precious to Mr. Doggett, and fifteen minutes after his one dollar bill went into the pocket of the County's representative, the new acquisition was seated beside him behind the abbreviated tail of Big Money.
"We'll go right on out," he said cheerfully to his purchase: "although," he added thoughtfully, "I wuz on the p'int o' fergittin' hit—you'll want to git your clothes. I'll jest drive by, and you can git 'em."
At the door of the yellow cottage on a rear street, Dunaway pointed out as the residence of his father-in-law, Mr. Doggett drew rein. This building, for five months from the day of his marriage, had been Dunaway's home, until his father-in-law, a one-armed pensioner, grew tired of waiting for him to add a day to the six days of manual labor he did during the term of his married life, and instituted vagrancy proceedings. The hospitality of the Kentuckian is great and lasting, but even gold will wear thin in time.
"I reckon," delicately hinted Mr. Doggett, "considerin' you hain't exactly in faver with your folks,I'dbetter go in the house fer the clothes."
"You needn't sayclotheshere," the peppery little man who answered Mr. Doggett's knock informed him, when he had stated his business. "I'll allow you to have them garments he's got coverin' his worthless hide, but the others, they'll have to go to pay a little on what he's eat off of me since Nan got took in last March! I feel sorry for you, man," he concluded, dryly, "ef you are goin' to undertake to keep him fed. I might have been able to put up with what he et at the table, but the between-meal business of runnin' into victuals and eatin' was more than my pension would stand up against!"
A suspicion that his hand was not going to be the gratuitous addition to his laboring force he had supposed crossed Mr. Doggett's mind, and somewhat ruefully he turned Big Money's head again in the direction of the dry goods houses, and climbed out before the store of Jacob Himmelstein.
"I been a layin' off to drap in to see you, Mr. Himmelstein, yes, sir, I have," Mr. Doggett mollified his Israelitish friend, whose first words of greeting were gentle reproaches: "but I jest hain't possible had time 'tel today, and I come in to see ef you couldn't sorter holp me out. Can't you gimme some barg'ins?"
"Can I gifyoubargains, mine frient?" Mr. Himmelstein's upraised hands spoke worlds of reproach: "I t'ought your memory vas goot!"
"Thar's a kind o' fellers that won't buy nothin' onless might' night' ever'body says they's gittin' a barg'in," pursued Mr. Doggett, "but I hain't one o' them kind. I wish I wuz."
"Ah, mine frient, you have been to buying elsewhere dan under de sign of J. Himmelstein!" mourned that gentleman.
Mr. Doggett told of his purchase of the morning, and of his garment shortage, and received voluble assurance of Mr. Himmelstein's ability and willingness to fit him out "sheap."
After a half-hour's haggling, the question of everyday clothing was settled in two pairs of azure cottonade "overhalls," three sky-colored hickory shirts, two outfits of underwear, a buckeye hat, and socks (three pairs for a nickel).
"Forty cents seems a reasonable price fer these here jeans breeches," Mr. Doggett mused, when he came to buy Dunaway's "Sunday" raiment: "but hain't they a leetle short in the leg? Hit seems to me they won't more'n hit him at the knees."
"Dey'll be all right for fine wedder," Himmelstein assured him, hastily wrapping up the doubtful pantaloons.
"A hat and shoes," Mr. Doggett reflected: "I hain't able to lay out but a doller er two more on him. I don't keer fer style fer him,—got anytheng a leetle onfashionable in the way o' head and foot coverin's?"
Mr. Himmelstein darted to a box in the extreme back part of his establishment, and after some moment's digging in its depths, brought out a flat derby of the style of twenty years past, and a pair of "needle pointers," number twelves.
"If your man can vear dese," he inveigled Mr. Doggett, "you can haf de great bargain for t'ree quarter of von dollar unt I t'row in de hat for von nickel unt two dimes more."
Mr. Doggett concluded to take the risk of their fitting, and had them wrapped up.
"Before we leave town," observed Dunaway, as Mr. Doggett took the reins, "I'd like to tell you I'm about out of chewing tobacco. 'Lady Isabel' is the brand I use."
"What's the matter with long green?" Mr. Doggett's tone was persuasive. "I've got a world o' that hanging up at home."
Dunaway coughed apologetically. "My stomach is delicate," he declared airily, "and anything but the Lady Isabel seems to irritate it."
Mr. Doggett climbed to the pavement once more and three minutes later a package of the "Lady Isabel" was added to the company of bundles under the buggy's seat.
Mr. Dunaway, on the drive, proved to be a most agreeable talker, oily of tongue,—eloquently mendacious. He explained to Mr. Doggett the circumstances that had brought him to his present state. His family was one of wealth and high social position, he said, and he had never known a care until the failure and death of his father. Since that time, travelling with a party of surveyors in the Arkansas swamps, he had contracted malaria, had drifted to Kentucky, and had married. Because of his delicacy, his wife had persuaded her father to allow them to remain with him for a while and the vagrancy proceedings were taken without hint to him that the old gentleman was weary of his presence. He was astounded at this cruel treatment, and could hardly believe that his two trunks of clothing would be withheld from him.
Mr. Doggett listened respectfully, with expressions of interest and sympathy,—and drew his own conclusions.
Mr. Dunaway's garments were neat in appearance, his face was newly shaved, and the visible portions of his person were clean, but, mindful of the suspicions that would be sure to arise in Mrs. Doggett's mind as to the personal cleanliness of a gentleman convicted of vagrancy, unless she had actual convincing evidence of the recent application of water to his epidermis, Mr. Doggett stopped when they reached a covered bridge, spanning a stream that crossed the road.
"How'd you like to go in washin', Dunaway, bein's hit's so hot?" he asked, as he hitched his horse to the roadside fence. "I b'leeveI'llgo in!"
Dunaway did not particularly relish the idea—it involved the expenditure of some energy—but he politely refrained from objection, and a few minutes later, he and his owner were disrobing behind a clump of elders that hid one of the banks of the Silver Run about fifty yards below the bridge.
Mr. Dunaway was in the deep water, first, enjoying the cool splashing, and swimming toward the bridge, before Mr. Doggett had divested himself of half his garments. This was Mr. Doggett's opportunity. Dunaway had laid his top shirt, his belt, tie, and shoes, apart from his other garments, which fact saved them to him, for when he started in the water, Mr. Doggett remembered other suspicions—unjust or otherwise—that might enter Mrs. Doggett's mind,—suspicions as to possible inhabitants of a vagrant's garments—and in his plunge, accidentally caught his foot in the heap of clothes, sending them into the deep water.
When Dunaway came back to the clump of elders for his clothes, Mr. Doggett was using the cake of laundry soap he held in his hand, in vigorous applications.
"I thought I'd wash my years and neck good while I wuz at hit, Dunaway," he said: "the old lady's mighty perticular. S'pose'n you lay on a little too, hit takes the pike dust off so slick!"
When the two climbed out of the water, Dunaway gazed uncertainly at the spot where had lain his trousers and underwear.
"Where the—" he began. Mr. Doggett interrupted him. "Ef your breeches and thengs hain't gone, Dunaway! That must 'a' been them I stumbled over when I went in! My foot caught on somethin'—I wuz a lookin' at you swimmin' off so peart—and I thought hit wuz a bunch o' grass er somethin'!"
"I guess they're in the bottom of some deep hole by this time," Dunaway remarked in a tone of light regret. "And what am I to wear?"
"Wear?" cried Mr. Doggett: "don't them thengs I got fer you come in handy now? Jest put on a suit them new underin's and a pair them overhalls, and one them hick'ry shirts, and you'll be ready to work in the patch this evenin'!"
It was twelve when Mr. Doggett reached home. "Jest step down in the spreng thar on the creek bank," he said to Dunaway who complained of thirst, "but don't knock over the old lady's milk jairs."
After dinner, Mr. Doggett conducted his new man to the field.
"I won't be hard on you this evenin', Dunaway, your fust day o' wormin'," he avowed, as each man started his row: "I'll take a row and sorter holp you in your'n too, onct in a while."
Dunaway was quick and agile, and although the sweat poured into his eyes, and his back ached with the unaccustomed stooping to lift the leaves, he managed to do a fair amount of worm-killing.
Dock or Gran'dad was usually sent to the spring for fresh water for the toilers, but when about three o'clock, Dunaway offered to go, Mr. Doggett made no objection.
"The pore feller hain't seasoned yit," he conciliated Dock and Gran'dad, for thus favoring the stranger, "and hit hain't no more'n jest to give him a leetle breathin' spell."
That evening, seven men (Bunch Trisler and his brother boarded at their own home) very weary of eye, of back and of arm, soiled with dust, perspiration, and tobacco gum—filed in, and immediately after supper, five of them, including the worn and dejected Dunaway, climbed the steps to their bedroom. Gran'dad rested a while in the sitting-room, discussing Dunaway with his son and Mrs. Doggett, while Dock stretched himself flat on the floor.
To Mr. Doggett's enthusiastic congratulation of himself on the wisdom of his purchase, Gran'dad remarked:
"I dunno as I'd keer to own him: seems to me he'd be a slippery possession."
"Yes," broke in Mrs. Doggett, "about the time you git him clothed up fer winter, he'll light out and that'll be the last you'll hear o'him!"
"Why, Ann," Mr. Doggett obtruded, "I could excribe him over the tillephorm, and could git him anywhar. He wouldn't have no chanst a runnin'!"
"He seems to be a mighty light eater," Gran'dad mused. "Wouldn't drink no buttermilk tonight: said hit wuz too fillin'."
"I bet he's a holdin' in," said Dock.
"He tuck holt o' work well," said Mr. Doggett. "Got a good sleight at suckerin', although I had to holp him some in his row a wormin'—him not bein' broke into the work—so we'd come out ever' row together. He's sorter green about hit. Told me he wisht I'd git him a pair o' gloves to keep the gum offen his hands. I told him I jest couldn't possible do hit,—he'd tear the leaves up in gloves."
"He's green about a heap o' work," put in Dock: "he told me he'd been all over the Nuniter States, and he'd never yit stuck job that wuz heftier, ner killiner, ner back-breakin'er, ner disagreeabler than wormin' and suckerin' terbaccer! I ast him wouldn't he holp me milk,—hitwuzn't no mean job, and he said he didn't know how to milk! I told him I thought ever'body knowed how to milk, and he said he reckon they ort ter ef they don't, and he'd git me to learn him when he wuzn't so wore out."
"Somethin's been in the milk jairs at the spreng," remarked Mrs. Doggett, regretfully. "When I went to strain the milk a while ago, I found two jairs o' fraish milk with ever' bit the cream skimmed off: wuzn'tnocream on 'em—fraish mornin's milk—and the milk on one jair wuz half down, like hit had been poured out into somethin'."
A suspicion as to the receptacle into which the milk and cream had been emptied, entered Mr. Doggett's mind, but he was discreet.
"Maybe some Mr. Archie Evans' fox hounds done hit, Ann," he suggested, maligning the innocent, "I heerd 'em out this evenin' about four o'clock."
"But the leds wuz all on," objected Mrs. Doggett.
"Well, maybe some the hands seed 'em off, and laid 'em back," persuaded Mr. Doggett,—"Bunch er Knox when they went home."
"Somethin's goin' with my aigs too," Mrs. Doggett further complained; "not nary aig did I git at the barn this evenin', and been a gittin' nineteen ever' day!"
The next day, to Mr. Doggett's secret chagrin, the energy and initiative of his new work-hand suffered a relapse: he complained that the sun affected his malaria infested system, and insisted on short rests every hour: he left suckers standing: he skipped worms: he came out many minutes behind the other men with his row.
The other hands enjoyed Mr. Doggett's discomfiture. Dunaway, working without wages, they regarded as a grand joke,—something that distinctly enlivened their hard toil, and they listened to his airy tales, and his light flippant fun making with keen relish.
"Darn that man Castle!" he inveighed in the middle of the afternoon, clinching one grimy, gum-covered fist. "Darn all tobacco that grows anyhow! I'd be happier in hell than I am here: I'll bet it's eighty per cent. cooler down there any time than it is in a tobacco patch in August!"
"Hain't none of us disputin' your statements, Dunaway," chuckled Gran'dad: "and ef you are a cravin' to git whar you claim thar's more bliss in store fer you, than you're enjoyin' here, jest wet a few them biggest leaves and lay 'em crost your chist and take a leetle nap, and you'll wake up down thar!"
Dunaway, however, declined to take this short cut to happiness.
With Dunaway's slackness in field work, came a degree of facility at table that surprised Mr. Doggett. While batting, and blinking his black eyes, directing airily polite and delicately conciliatory speeches toward Mrs. Doggett, and telling gay tales to interest the men,—not seeming to gorge—he threw food into his mouth with the rapidity and dexterity of the ant-eater at his repast.
"I declare, Eph," remarked Mrs. Doggett, one evening after a few days of the new hired man, "that crittur has shorely got the right name! He's done away with more victuals in them four days sence he's been here than'd lasted Lily Pearl a year! Ever' meal thar hain't been nary bite o' bread left, and I've had to go and make up more bread before me and Lily Pearl could eat!"
"Thenk he eats as much as Keerby?" asked Mr. Doggett.
"Keerby?" Mrs. Doggett's voice rose to a scornful screech. "When Keerby put his feet onder our table, we wuzhurt, but when Dunaway puts them long legs o' his'n onder our oil-cloth, we're might' night' ruined, I tell you, Eph Doggett!"
In the days that followed, to Mrs. Doggett's distress (for it made serious inroads on her butter making), her cream was skimmed almost daily, and on Wednesday morning of the second week of Dunaway's bondage, when she went into her smoke-house to take down a large ham for cooking, she found that the lean portion was completely hollowed out, not by rats, but by a skilful pocket-knife. In addition, a dozen or more of the large "hill onions," on which she had taken a premium at the County fair, and which she took pride in showing visitors, were gone from their shelf in the meat-house, and a full jar of honey, she had obtained from the Evans beeyard, to use when her most honored guest (Mr. Brock) should sit at her table, was eaten half-down!
Full of wrathful suspicion, she locked her smoke-house in the daytime, kept an eye on the milk at the spring, and sent Lily Pearl running to the nests at every hen's cackle.
Dunaway, during his ten days' stay in the Doggett household, had become an intimate of Dock: the "hands," including Gran'dad and Joey, liked him, like Desdemona the Moor, because of the tales he told, and his glib pleasantries: even Mr. Doggett, despite the trouble to which he was put to get his bondman to work any, fell under his charm.
Not so Mrs. Doggett. After the between-meal pilfering of her provisions, although she did not openly accuse Dunaway, her dislike and distrust of him were glaringly apparent, and although he was unfailingly polite and respectful to her, and adroitly concealed his enmity, he heartily returned her dislike.
Little Dock Doggett would have pressed through fire or an iron wall, had there been an apple or a plum on the other side the flames or the metal: he knew the whereabouts of every wild haw, (red or black), pawpaw, or persimmon tree, or wild grape vine, in the neighborhood, and nobody's fruit orchard or melon patch was immune from his visits.
When the Castles moved to town, leaving Mr. Brock to occupy a portion of their country residence, and in full and absolute control of their strawberry beds, grape-arbors, and fruit-orchards, invasion of these fruiteries was no longer easy.
Dock had never liked Mr. Brock, and when his inner part began to cry for fruit whose acquisition Mr. Brock's presence prevented, his hatred of that gentleman became violent.
Mr. Brock prided himself on an annual patch of fine melons, and at the time of the coming of Dunaway, his melons were approaching maturity. There was no other melon patch in the neighborhood, and for days, Dock's dreams at night had been of nothing else.
"I know whar thar's ripe mush and water millerns," he confided to Dunaway, the next morning after Mrs. Doggett's securing of her provisions against thieves. "A body has to go at night to git 'em though, 'cause they're right next to a terbaccer patch whar the man is workin' ever'day." Dock was an arrant coward at night.
"If it's a partner you want," Dunaway grinned, "I'm your man!"
Dock agreed that this was the desire of his heart, and a compact was made for the evening.
It rained the entire day through, but there was no cessation of work in the tobacco-field of Ephriam Doggett: it was near the end of the week, and Sunday—Sunday when suckers grow and worms eat as on a week day!
As weary and besoaked as the Continental Army, on the Christmas night of '76, the men trailed in at nightfall. They had been wet to the skin since early morning, and as soon as hunger was satisfied, each, with two exceptions, stumbled off to bed, to fall into the immediate sleep of exhaustion. These exceptions were Dock and Dunaway, who, when the others were safely asleep, stole out and took their well-lighted way (the moon was full) to the hillside where, separated from the tobacco field by a wire fence, lay Mr. Brock's water-melon patch. The dread wet day tobacco patch weariness is a powerful thing, but the desire of the stomach for the fruit of the vine is more mighty.
Near a great stump in the middle of the patch grew a vine with which Mr. Brock had taken the greatest pains in work and fertilization. The one mighty melon he allowed to grow on this vine, he intended for a present, and when it was about half developed, he had traced on its rind, with the point of a pin, the inscription: "To Miss Lucy James, from her friend, Galvin Brock."
These letters had widened and healed with the growth of the melon, until, in its maturity, they were like something done in crewel embroidery. It looked an unique thing. Mr. Brock was proud of it to a degree, and had planned on Sunday to take it to Miss Lucy.
"Here's our melon!" cried Dunaway, thumping the prize gift.
"Don't plunk right," objected Dock: "hit needs about one more day's sun: less hunt another un."
At that moment a sneeze betrayed to the raiders the approach of their enemy. Mr. Brock, coming out to test the ripeness of his intended gift, thought he saw two shapes by the big stump: he wheezed forward, but when he reached the stump, no one was there, and the gate at the lower end of the patch hung wide open.
Dock and his assistant did not dare to make another venture that night, but laid their plans for an invasion at a later hour on the following evening. Fatigue was the portion next evening of Dunaway, who, under Mr. Doggett's constant urging, did a fair day's work, and of Dock, who never shirked in the tobacco patch, but ten o'clock found Dunaway gleefully bearing the big melon ornamented with the words of presentation in the direction of the gate of exit, and Dock, filling an empty flour sack with cantaloupes.
"Lay down that melon!" suddenly sounded gruffly on their ears, and a thick-set man, brandishing a stout leather whip, emerged from the shadow of a big walnut near the fence.
"Lay down that melon, I tell you, or I'll smash you flat!"
Something was smashed, but it was not the bondsman. Dunaway, cornered, lifted the melon high, and dropped it heavily on a flat rock that lay near the gate. It burst in a dozen pieces, and the sweet juice flew in the face of the horrified Mr. Brock.
That gentleman, enraged at this wanton destruction of Miss Lucy's present, said something that would have fallen harshly on the lady's ear, and rushed forward with his cowhide. But Dunaway had fled and Dock, his booty cast aside, was making a wild dash toward the open gate. Fate, in the shape of fatigue, retarded his movements; a tough vine tripped him, and he fell.
Before he could rise, the sole of a heavy foot was forcibly applied to the rear side of his trousers, the lash of his pursuer had twice smote his bare legs, and before he could reach the gate and safety, a half dozen more mighty cuts were bestowed on those insignificant members that Gran'dad called Dock's foot-handles.
Early next morning, Mr. Brock appeared at Mr. Doggett's with anger burning in his eyes. Mrs. Doggett was not at home, but Mr. Doggett had remained at the house a few minutes behind his workmen, and into his ears Mr. Brock poured his melon tale. Mr. Doggett was solicitously sympathetic.
"Who on earth you reckon 'twuz tuck your big millern, Mr. Brock?" he asked wonderingly.
"The man was nobody but that vagabond, Dunaway, you've got a workin' for you, and the little feller with him, judgin' by his size, wasDock!"
Mr. Doggett smiled. "Shorely, Mr. Brock, you are mistakened. We all worked in the rain, day before yistiddy, and hit wuz all the boys could do to git upstairs last night to bed, after they et, and I noticed Dock wuz so stiffened up, he wuz walkin' lame this mornin'."
"I saw a man's track in the mud by the gate this mornin'," said Mr. Brock: "a pointed shoe track."
Dunaway had reviled the long needle-pointed shoes, but his worn patent leathers had come in pieces on the second day of his labors, and he had been, perforce, to the great delight of the other men, obliged to put the "new" shoes on to protect his feet from blistering and the dry clods.
"And," added Mr. Brock in fine scorn, "there's nobody in the County a wearin' needle-pointed shoes at present, but your hireling. As for his companion, I didn't see his face, for the cloud that came up over the moon when I was close to him, and he got away before I could git my hands on his collar, but an old cowhide in my hand came in close contact with his legs. You never noticed any stripes on Dock's standards this mornin' did you?"
Mr. Doggett was much troubled.
"I jest hate hit awful, Mr. Brock," he deplored, "ef'twuzthem. I hain't never warned the boys ag'in goin' in millern patches, no, sir, I hain't, although I ort to 'a' done hit, yes, sir. But I'll see they don't go in yourn no more."
"If I catch Dunaway in again," said Mr. Brock, thickly and with heat, as he started homeward, "it certainly won't be good forhim. I'll just manage to get word to the sheriff down where he wintered, where he broke jail without servin' out his time for indulgin' in some law breakin'!"
Dock's legs, Mr. Doggett's public reproof, and the ungratified longing in his stomach for melons, were still giving the boy trouble late Saturday afternoon, after the flight of Friday evening.
"Old devil!" Dock remarked to Dunaway as they went from the field together, conversing of their enemy: "he's a layin' hisse'f out to please the Jeemeses—sendin' 'em water-millerns and canterlopes, and mush-millerns! He thenks he's a gittin' on with Miss Lucy, and I don't b'lieve Miss Lucy'd give Mr. Lindsay's little fenger fer all old Galvin Brock, ef Mr. Jeemes and Miss Nancy'd let her have Mr. Lindsay. I b'lieve old Brock told old Mr. Jeemes some lies, anyway, on Mr. Lindsay! And he couldn't let us jes'tasteone his old millerns! Old devil! I'll stamp him yit!"
"Consarn his old moley, red nose! I'll help you stamp him, Dock!" offered Dunaway, mindful of possible weary days in a Mississippi jail.
"Miss Lucy Jeemes used to give me pears sometimes; her'n is gittin' ripe now," Dock remarked irrelevantly: "I believe I'll go up thar in the mornin', ef Miss Nancy is gone to church (she's stingy), and git some. Wanter go with me?"
"I'd go in a minute," said Dunaway, "if it were not for the figure I cut in the confounded short jeanses, and these blasted needle-pointers, and that Noah's Ark derby!"
"Ef I'll slip you out a pair o' Jappy's pants, and his last year's Sunday slippers, and one of his white shirts and collars, and Joey's cap, will you go?" asked Dock.
"Sure!" agreed Dunaway.
Dunaway had liked the gentle Mr. Lindsay, from their first meeting. From Dock, he had learned of Mr. Lindsay's connection with the James family, of the affair of the trunk, and of the interrupted winter's courtship. He had discovered that Mrs. Doggett was espousing the cause of Brock, had observed that Mr. Lindsay on his Saturday evening's visit, had winced when she had prophesied that Mr. Brock would be married to Miss Lucy before his tobacco was cured, and had resolved to help him when opportunity offered itself.
After Mrs. Doggett's application of locks to her food supplies, and after Mr. Brock's threats became known to him, Dunaway had the incentive of revengeful desires to stimulate him to aid Mr. Lindsay in the cause of love.
"My hair is a gittin' turrible long, Mr. Lindsay," Mr. Doggett remarked on Sunday morning to his guest who, more pallid and worn than the week before, had come on Saturday evening: "and your'n's might' night' long enough to do up in a French twist: less git a pair clippers, and have a hair cuttin'."
"All right," agreed Mr. Lindsay, "I'll jest step over to Archie Evans'—he's got ever'thing—and borry his. Anybody want to go with me?"
Dunaway proffered his company immediately.
"You're paler and thinner than you were this time last week," he observed, on their way, "and hard work oughtn't to bleach you that way. What's the matter? Sweetheart gone back on you?"
Mr. Lindsay looked at him intently: but sympathetic interest alone was expressed in the shining black eyes.
"I dunno abouther, Dunaway," he said, after a moment: "sometimes I believe her folks have set her ag'in me, and turned her toward another man, then ag'in I dunno whether I am right er not!"
"I hear she's like an angel," reflected Dunaway. "You still think so too, don't you?"
"I don't deny I still thenk hit," confided Mr. Lindsay, "and I believe she'd 'a' married me too," he added impulsively, "ef hit hadn't been fer Galvin Brock lyin' about me to old Milton! Brock—maybe you don't know hit—wants her hisse'f!"
Dunaway declined entering the brick house of the Evans', but remained a respectable distance out, in the field, giving "the confounded jeanses" as his reason. His mind rapidly formulated a plan, on the way back to the Doggett home. Dock impatiently awaited him at the woodpile.
"I snooped up thar in Mr. Jeemeses pastur," he whispered, "and seed Miss Nancy a startin' off to church—she's plumb out o' sight by now; now's our time to go ast Miss Lucy fer them pears. I got them clothes ready on the back side Mr. Jeemeses strawstack."
The pear tree of Dock's admiration stood in the northeast corner of the orchard, out of range of the porch, and next the garden, from which the orchard was separated by a post-and-rail fence, easily climbed; along the eastern side of the garden and orchard lay a picket fence, over which leaned blackberry bushes on the orchard side, and golden rod on the pasture field side.
There was no opening into the pasture field from the orchard, but a small gate led into the grass field from the garden. Miss Lucy James, gathering green beans, looked up to see Dock, accompanied by a tall and good-looking young man, in a neat shirt-waist costume, coming toward her.
"This is Ma's cousin, Alfred Bronston, Miss Lucy," said Dock (acting by instructions) by way of introduction. "He's been a workin' fer us a month. He's the one Mr. Lindsay thenks so much of."
Miss Lucy's slim hand was very cold when she held it out to Dunaway.
"How is Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Bronston?" she asked. "Have you saw him lately?"
"He's at our house today," answered Dunaway, "but I'm sorry to say, he is not looking well."
"He's awful puny lookin'," exaggerated Dock, still following previous instructions: "Pap says he thenks he's goin' into a recline; his eyes is all sunk in, and he's paler'n a taller candle, and jest wouldn't weighnothin'!"
Miss Lucy's heart gave a great plunge, and seemed to stand still: her hand lost its grasp of the basket—the beans were scattered.
"Allow me to pick them up, Miss James," said courteous Dunaway, and the knees of dudish Jappy's second best pantaloons went down in the dirt.
"Me and Dun—my cousin—" ventured Dock,—"we wanted to git a few pears to eat—jest a little taste, Miss Lucy."
"Ef you'll empty the beans on the kitchen table for me, Dock," said Miss Lucy, "you can gather some pears in the basket to take home with you."
The words had scarcely left her lips, before Dock was opening the kitchen door in joyful obedience.
"Is what Dock says about Mr. Lindsay true, Mr. Bronston?" Miss Lucy's voice trembled over the question.
"Well," answered Dunaway, "when a man is in deep trouble, his bodily health is bound to be disturbed, and Mr. Lindsay—" he paused as though reluctant to go on.
"What—what is he worryin' about?" fluttered Miss Lucy.
Dunaway looked straight at her—an earnest, honest look.
"You want me to tell you the truth, Miss James? He thinks he has lost your love."
When Dock came back, Miss Lucy pointed to the pear tree.
"Jest go and help yourselves, Dock, you and your cousin: I—I've got to git a little note ready, I want to send by you."
It was many minutes before Miss Lucy, with her eyes suspiciously pink, appeared under the pear tree with a sealed envelope of a delicate lavender shade, in her hands, and the three, Dock, his "cousin" and the basket were alike full.
"Ef you could give this to him, without anybody seein' hit, I'd be glad," faltered Miss Lucy, as Dunaway placed the envelope carefully in the pocket of Jappy's white blouse.
"Mr. Lindsay shall have this in his hands in a few minutes, and nobody shall be the wiser," he assured her with a smile so full of good-will and encouragement, that her heart lightened as she looked at him.
When the two pear-bearers once more appeared at the Doggett home, Dunaway wore his own clothes, and a bundle in a clump of briars awaited a favorable opportunity to be conveyed to the house.
All that afternoon, Mr. Lindsay sat leaning against the pine in the front yard, with a glow in his face that told of a joyful heart within, and when Lily Pearl's pet pig, his especial aversion, poked an inquiring nose against the letter in his left hand, he gently patted the muddy back with his right.