“No, but you are, and that’ll do
for both of us. There’s nobody round, and
if you’ll hurry, nobody’ll see you.
Push the lid to one side, and get in, and you’ll
be perfectly safe,” he said as Dylks tremulously
mounted the ladder. “I don’t say you’ll
be very comfortable. There’s a little window
at one end, but it don’t give much air, and this
August sun is apt to get a little warm on the clapboards.
And I don’t suppose it smells very well in there;
but the coon can’t help that; it’s the
way nature scented him; she hadn’t any sweet
brier handy at the time. And be careful not to
step on him. He’s not very good-tempered,
but I reckon he won’t bite you if you don’t
bite him."
The kitchen door opened and Mrs. Braile put her head
out. She saw the ladder and the two men.
Then she came out into the porch. “Well,
Matthew Braile, I might have knowed from the sound
of your voice that you was up to some mischief.
Was you goin’ to send that poor man up into that
hot loft? Well, I can tell you you’re not.”
She went into the room they had left, and they heard
her stirring vigorously about beyond its closed door,
with a noise of rapid steps and hard and soft thumpings.
She came out again and said, “Go in there, now,
Mr. Dylks, and try to get some rest. I’ve
made up the bed for you, and I’ll see
that nobody disturbs you. Matthew Braile, you
send and tell Mr. Hingston,—or go,
if you can’t ketch anybody goin’ past,—and
tell him he’s here, and bring some decent clothes;
he ain’t fit to be seen.”
“Well, he don’t want to be,” the
Squire said in the attempt to brave her onset.
“But I reckon you’re right, mother.
I should probably have thought of it myself—in
time. I’ll send Sally or Abel, if they go
past—and they nearly always do—or
some of the hands from the tobacco patches. Or,
as you say, I may go myself, towards evening.
He won’t want to be troubled before then.”
XVIII
At the first meeting in the Temple after the open
return of Dylks to his dispensation, the Little Flock
had apparently suffered no loss in number. Some
of his followers had left him, but his disciples had
been busily preaching him during his abeyance, and
the defection of old converts was more than made up
by the number of proselytes. The room actually
left by the Flock was filled by the Herd of the Lost
who occupied all the seats on one side of the Temple,
with Matthew Braile and his wife in a foremost place,
the lower sort of them worsening into the Hounds who
filled the doorway, and hung about the outside of
the Temple.
Copyrights
The Leatherwood God from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
