Seated around a table at the side of the room opposite the door were two men, one young, bronzed, but handsome, the other older and weather beaten, his beard untrimmed and hair unkempt. They looked toward the door as the strange visitor of the night entered, then quickly, as if from a sudden impulse, the older man stood up. His hand shook, as it rested upon the table, and his eyes stood out as if they would leap from their sockets. The tall figure of this silent woman had advanced to the middle of the room, her eyes fastened upon the man standing by the table. Slowly her two arms were raised, and stepping quickly forward, in a dreadful whisper she ejaculated, “Surely, Andy, it is ye!” Cameron also had recognized his wife, but he caught her in his arms only to lay her tenderly upon the couch, for she had swooned away.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Mortgage Comes Due.
On the first of October—at least so they said back at The Gore—Nick Perkins was to take over as his own the Cameron farms at The Front.
Since the flight of Barbara early in September Perkins had patrolled the roadway almost daily, surveying from his wagon, as was his custom, the home of Laughing Donald. Then continuing his round of inspection, he would ride along past the farm at The Nole. There at the closed gate, mute but defiant, guarding the house like a faithful dumb animal in the absence of his master, Perkins found Andy’s Dan each time that he passed.
The cool evenings of the approaching Autumn had broken up the meetings of the Gossip Club before the smithy, but the depression weighing upon the sympathizers of their luckless neighbors at The Front was like the ominous quiet preceding a storm which leaves disaster and despair in its wake.
Angus Ferguson had frequently lent a helping hand in the putting away of the Winter’s supply up at Laughing Donald’s, and of late the silence existing between Davy the blacksmith and Bill Blakely, and their intense thoughtfulness whenever they met at the shop, was proof positive to the observer that they understood that the responsibility of averting the approaching trouble to their neighbor—which was also an indignity aimed at the clans at The Front—devolved wholly upon them. As the days passed the confident look on the face of Perkins so asserted itself that at length while passing the shop he stared into the blackness of the open door with the insinuating smile of the hypocrite. Davy watched him from the grimy window nearest the forge, and by one of his severe quieting looks he persuaded Bill Blakely to let him drive on unmolested. After Perkins and his cream-colored nag had disappeared up the roadway along The Front, Bill walked uneasily around the shop, kicking about the floor the loose horse-shoes and fire tongs lying at the foot of the anvil. Davy glanced at his friend over the steel rims of his spectacles, awaiting an expression on the subject each had silently argued for weeks, as he rounded the while on the anvil’s arm the curve of a shoe to fit the farm horse lazily resting in the corner. During the last minute before leaving Davy, the frowning wrinkles in the face and forehead of Old Bill had disappeared, and encountering the smith as he carried in the tongs, grasping by the red hot toe cork the shoe to fit to the mare in the corner, his lips were copiously moistened from the weed to which he was a pronounced slave. His goatee was moving rapidly up and down, and Davy halted, for he knew a decision had been reached.