They returned to the hotel and both alighted.
“Skittish devil,” remarked the landlord,
as the colt quivered under the hand he laid upon him.
“He’s skittish,” said Bartley.
The landlord retired as far back as the door, and
regarded the colt critically. “Well, I
s’pose you’ve always used him too well
ever to winded him, but dumn ’f he don’t
blow like it.”
“Look here, Simpson,” said Bartley, very
quietly. “You know this horse as well as
I do, and you know there isn’t an out about him.
You want to buy him because you always have.
Now make me an offer.”
“Well,” groaned the landlord, “what’ll
you take for the whole rig, just as it stands,—colt,
cutter, leathers, and robe?”
“Two hundred dollars,” promptly replied
Bartley.
“I’ll give ye seventy-five,” returned
the landlord with equal promptness.
“Andy, take hold of the end of that trunk, will
you?”
The landlord allowed them to put the trunk into the
cutter. Bartley got in too, and, shifting the
baggage to one side, folded the robe around him from
his middle down and took his seat. “This
colt can road you right along all day inside of five
minutes, and he can trot inside of two-thirty every
time; and you know it as well as I do.”
“Well,” said the landlord, “make
it an even hundred.”
Bartley leaned forward and gathered up the reins,
“Let go his head, Andy,” he quietly commanded.
“Make it one and a quarter,” cried the
landlord, not seeing that his chance was past.
“What do you say?”
What Bartley said, as he touched the colt with the
whip, the landlord never knew. He stood watching
the cutter’s swift disappearance up the road,
in a sort of stupid expectation of its return.
When he realized that Bartley’s departure was
final, he said under his breath, “Sold, ye dumned
old fool, and serve ye right,” and went in-doors
with a feeling of admiration! for colt and man that
bordered on reverence.
This last drop of the local meanness filled Bartley’s
bitter cup. As he passed the house at the end
of the street he seemed to drain it all. He knew
that the old lawyer was there sitting by the office
stove, drawing his hand across his chin, and Bartley
hoped that he was still as miserable as he had looked
when he last saw him; but he did not know that by the
window in the house, which he would not even look
at, Marcia sat self-prisoned in her room, with her
eyes upon the road, famishing for the thousandth part
of a chance to see him pass. She saw him now
for the instant of his coming and going. With
eyes trained to take in every point, she saw the preparation
which seemed like final departure, and with a gasp
of “Bartley!” as if she were trying to
call after him, she sank back into her chair and shut
her eyes.
