Lot smiled.
The doctor was old, and his long struggle with birth
and death had begun to tell upon him. He had
already visited Lot that morning, after a hard night
with a patient, back in the hills. His face was
haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his
eyes fierce, like an old dog’s, with fatigue
and hunger. He had just reached home and sat
down to his breakfast when this new call came.
He had thought Lot was dying from Madelon’s
imperative summons, and she had not undeceived him.
She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts to
save Burr Gordon.
“What in thunder did ye send for me again for?”
he snapped. This old country doctor was never
chary of plain speaking, and his brusqueness had increased
his popularity. Many of his patients were simple
countrywomen, who had greater belief in that which
they feared. They repeated his half-savage speeches
to each other, and added, “He’s a good
doctor, if he does speak out.”
Lot only smiled that covert smile of his, which seemed
to imply some wisdom of humor beyond the ken of others.
“I ought to be dying,” he said, with grim
apology. “I ought not—to have
disturbed you all for a less reason than to witness
my final exit, but I want you to witness something
else.” Lot Gordon spoke quite strongly
and connectedly.
“What?” asked the doctor, irritably.
“I want to make a statement,” said Lot
Gordon.
There was a pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look
of heavy facetiousness, slightly tempered now with
curiosity, stood lounging into his great snowy boots
at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the consolation
for the dying which he had thought to administer still
in his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender
height in his black surtout inclined towards the sick
man with gentle courtesy, waited. Margaret Bean
peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood
near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead,
and a look of awful listening upon it. In the
background David Hautville, wrathful and wondering,
towered over them all.
“I wish to declare in the presence of these
witnesses,” said Lot Gordon, “the doctor
here testifying that I am in my right mind”—the
doctor gave a surly grunt of assent—“that
it is my firm belief that all mortal ills come to
man through his own agency, and this last ill of mine
is no exception. I declare solemnly before you
all that my cousin Burr Gordon is not guilty of administering
this wound which I bear in my side.”
The sheriff started forward. “Who did do
it, then?” he cried out.
“I myself,” replied Lot Gordon.
There was a gasp of astonishment from the company.
Jonas Hapgood began to speak, but Madelon’s
soprano drowned out his thick bass.
“How dare you,” she cried out, “swear
to that lie? Liar! You are a liar, Lot Gordon!”
Then, before Lot could reply, David Hautville came
forward with a mighty plunge, and grasped his daughter
by the arm, and forced her to the door.
