“Thar now!” he said with carefully repressed violence, lest his tones should disturb the sick man. “You’ve raised up a pretty interruption with my patient. I ’lowed I could trust you, Jude. What in the world you fussin’ with Creed about? For God’s sake, did you see him? You’ve nigh-about killed him, I reckon. Didn’t I tell you not to name anything to him to werry him?”
“He says he’s married Huldy,” said Judith in a strangled voice.
“Say! He’d say anything—like he is now,” retorted her uncle, exasperated. “An’ he’d shore say anything on earth that was put in his mouth. I don’t care if he’s married forty Huldy’s; what I want is for him to get well. Lord, I do wish I had Nancy here, and not one of these fool young gals with their courtin’ business and their gettin’ jealous and having to have a rippit with a sick man that don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” he went on savagely.
But high-spirited Judith paid no attention to the cutting arraignment.
“Do you think that’s true—oh, Uncle Jep, do you reckon he didn’t mean it?” was all she said.
“I don’t see as it makes any differ,” retorted her uncle, testily. “Marryin’ Huldy Spiller ain’t no hangin’ matter—but hit’ll cost that boy his life ef you fuss with him and git him excited and all worked up.”
Judith turned and felt her way blindly up the steep little stair to her own room. That night she prayed, not in a formulated fashion, but to some vague, over-brooding goodness that she hoped would save her from cruelty to him she loved.
The next morning Creed was plainly set back in his progress toward sound rationality, though there seemed little physical change. He recognised no one, and was much as he had been on those first days. While this condition of affairs held, and it lasted nearly a week, there was no need for Jephthah to repeat his caution. But one morning when Judith went in to relieve her uncle, Creed smiled at her again with eyes that knew.
As soon as they were alone together, he asked her to come and sit by him, and told her with tolerable clearness how he had followed Blatch Turrentine onto the train at Garyville, how he had fainted there, and only recovered consciousness when they were halfway to the next station.
“I was too bad off for them to leave me anywhere, and they carried me plumb to Atlanta. I was in the hospital there a long while. Looks like I might have written to you—but I thought the best I could do was to let you alone—I’d made you trouble enough,” he ended with a wistful, half-hopeful glance at her face.