“Well, shut yo’ fool mouth and get yo’se’f to work,” ordered Blatch. “I’ve got to be out o’ this.”
He turned his back on old Gid and forgot him.
“Ef I thort I had time I’d take my still with me,” he ruminated, going close to it and laying a fond touch upon the copper-work. “I’m a mind to try it.”
“Hands up, Turrentine!” came a short sharp order from outside. Blatch whirled like a flash, and looked past Gideon Rust in the doorway. Over the old man’s shaking shoulders, he saw the levelled rifles of the marshal and his posse.
“Thar,” whispered ancient Gideon fairly weeping, as they closed in on Turrentine and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists, “now mebbe ye won’t name a pore old woman’s name so free, ef you have bought her to yo’ will, and set her to spy on them that’s been good friends to her.”
Chapter XXVII
Love’s Guerdon
When Judith left Andy in charge of her patient and mounted the ladderlike stair to her own small room under the eaves, she felt no disposition to sleep. She did not undress, but sat down by the window and stared out into the black November night. Despite everything, there had come a sort of peace over her tumult, a stilling that was not mere weariness. She was like a woman who has just been saved from a shipwreck, snatched away from the imminent jaws of doom—chastened, and wondering a little. Intensely thankful for what she had escaped, she sat there in the dark, cold little room, Judith Barrier, safe from the sin of a godless union, from the life that would have been hers as Blatchley Turrentine’s wife.