“But how many people know of this arrangement?”
“Nearly every one in the county except the Cross-Roads
people, though it is not improbable that they have
discovered it.”
“And has no one told him”
“No; it would annoy him; he would not allow
it to continue. He will not even arm himself.”
“They follow and watch him night after night,
and every one knows and no one tells him? Oh,
I must say,” cried the girl, “I think these
are good people.”
The stalwart old man on the front seat shook out the
reins and whined the whip over his roans’ backs.
“They are the people of your State and mine.
Miss Sherwood,” he said in his hearty voice,
“the best people in God’s world—and
I’m not running for Congress, either!”
“But how about the Six-Cross-Roads people, father?”
asked Minnie.
“We’ll wipe them clean out some day,”
answered her father—“possibly judicially,
possibly——”
“Surely judiciously?” suggested Miss Sherwood.
“If you care to see what a bad settlement looks
like, we’ll drive through there to-morrow—by
daylight,” said Briscoe. “Even the
doctor doesn’t insist on being in that neighborhood
after dark. They are trying their best to get
Harkless, and if they do——”
“If they do!” repeated Miss Sherwood.
She clasped Fisbee’s hand gently. His eyes
shone and he touched her fingers with a strange, shy
reverence.
“You will meet him to-morrow,” he said.
She laughed and pressed his hand. “I’m
afraid not. He wasn’t even interested enough
to look at me.”
LONESOMENESS
When the rusty hands of the office clock marked half-past
four, the editor-in-chief of the “Carlow County
Herald” took his hand out of his hair, wiped
his pen on his last notice from the White-Caps, put
on his coat, swept out the close little entry, and
left the sanctum for the bright June afternoon.
He chose the way to the west, strolling thoughtfully
out of town by the white, hot, deserted Main Street,
and thence onward by the country road into which its
proud half-mile of old brick store buildings, tumbled-down
frame shops and thinly painted cottages degenerated.
The sun was in his face, where the road ran between
the summer fields, lying waveless, low, gracious in
promise; but, coming to a wood of hickory and beech
and walnut that stood beyond, he might turn his down-bent-hat-brim
up and hold his head erect. Here the shade fell
deep and cool on the green tangle of rag and iron
weed and long grass in the corners of the snake fence,
although the sun beat upon the road so dose beside.
There was no movement in the crisp young leaves overhead;
high in the boughs there was a quick flirt of crimson
where two robins hopped noiselessly. No insect
raised resentment of the lonesomeness: the late
afternoon, when the air is quite still, had come;
yet there rested—somewhere—on
the quiet day, a faint, pleasant, woody smell.
It came to the editor of the “Herald” as
he climbed to the top rail of the fence for a seat,
and he drew a long, deep breath to get the elusive
odor more luxuriously—and then it was gone
altogether.
