'Good afternoon, gentlemen;' and Mr. Tucker bowed very stiffly, which perhaps he was obliged to do, for his coat was buttoned up close to the neck—a habit he maintained at all seasons.
'Good day, Mr. Tucker; you seem to be in a hurry, neighbor; the old mare is quite out of breath.'
'Oh no; not at all,' turning at the same time, and eyeing his beast; 'she always breathes so. You may put her under the shed, Jo,' addressing a good-natured looking black, who stood waiting orders at the head of the beast.
'Yes, massa. Any oats, massa?'
'No—well—I don't care—yes. You may give her a mess—two quarts, Jo. Wet them, you hear?'
Jo took the mare by the head, turned his face away from the company, opened his broad mouth, and went grinning along to the shed.
'My golly! two quarts—ha, ha, ha! a half bushel no fill her belly—ha, ha, ha!'
Mr. Richard has not altered much since we last saw him, either in appearance or disposition. Why he had come along that afternoon, no one knew; nor did he seem to be making preparation as though he had a job on hand. He heard the news of Mr. Rutherford's disaster with apparent indifference. I say apparent, for there is no doubt he felt much and deeply; he talked with one and another, making very few remarks, but asking a great many questions, and occasionally shrugging his shoulders, and knitting his dark eyebrows—it was a way he had. What effect his pantomime had upon those with whom he conversed was not very manifest, for they finally dropped off, one by one, leaving no orders behind them.
It is an old saying, 'If one won't, another will.' Mr. Richard, no doubt, had heard the saying, and must have had considerable faith in it; for there was not an individual, either high or low, that escaped his attentions.
The Irish are proverbially susceptible. Whether Mr. Richard knew this as a historical fact, I will not pretend to say, nor whether it led him to make a more direct and positive attack on poor Pat than he had done upon others that day; the result, however, was, that Jerry Malony, a rather good-natured fellow, to whom Mr. Rutherford was indebted for a summer's ditching, and whose pay was as sure as though already in his own hands, was suddenly seized with great terrors, in view of the certain loss of all his hard earnings, and with a distressing anxiety to become possessed, as a means of securing himself, of a pair of fine black horses, then in the possession of said Rutherford.