His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe.  What if she should never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the lanky girl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated?  It would be better than this.  Yet at the same moment the picture was before him of her pretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared arms and laughing eyes, all so new, so fresh to him!  He tried to listen to the slow ticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of air through the house, and the movement, like a deep sigh, which was the regular, inarticulate speech of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the evening breeze.  He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learned that day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before.  Then, perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of the whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused and whirling.  Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear voices that called him to “wake,” and in the midst of it he fell into a profound sleep.

The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay motionless for many minutes.

Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appalling snort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke.  A healthy animal, he had shaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a thirst for water and fresh air.  He raised his knees and rubbed his eyes.  The water bucket was missing from the corner.  Well, he knew where the spring was, and a turn out of the close and stifling kitchen would do him good.  He yawned, put on his boots softly, opened the back door, and stepped out.  Everything was dark, but above and around him, to the very level of his feet, all apparently pricked with bright stars.  The bulk of the barn rose dimly before him on the right, to the left was the spring.  He reached it, drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.  The dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him, rimmed with stars, did the rest.  He began to saunter slowly back, the only reminiscence of his evening’s potations being the figure he recalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted glasses, imitating the barkeeper.  A complacent smile straightened his yellow mustache.  How she kept glancing at him and watching him, the little witch!  Ha! no wonder!  What could she find in the surly, slinking, stupid brute yonder? (The gentleman here alluded to was his host.) But the deputy had not been without a certain provincial success with the fair.  He was true to most men, and fearless to all.  One may not be too hard upon him at this moment of his life.