“When you reach the spot, you’ll know it by the great sycamore trees with their white balls; ask somebody to show you the missionary’s cabin. You couldn’t miss it if you tried.”
The stranger thanked her gravely, and laying a piece of gold on the table went out quietly as he had entered.
Aunt Polly started up, and going to the back door, cried vigorously across the bed of young cabbages for Sim White, the hired man, who had lived with her all winter, to hurry up and bring out the gentleman’s critter. But while the words were on her lips she heard the tramp of a horse, and running to the front window saw her guest riding at a brisk pace down the river.
“Well, if this don’t beat all creation,” said the old maid, laying the guinea in her palm, and examining it on both sides with delight. “I wonder who on ’arth he can be!”
Muttering these words, the landlady drew forth her shot-bag from a corner cupboard, and after examining the gold pieces already there, with loving curiosity, laid her new treasure beside it.
“Now, there’s luck in that,” she said, tying the shot-bag up with a grim smile. “I wonder what’ll come next. It never rains but it storms. The gold has come, and now I must take a run on something else. I wonder where Sim White has hid himself. If Captain Butler don’t want this ’ere chicken, I don’t know any one that has a better right to it than Sim.”
As she was covering the dish, to set it down by the fire, Aunt Polly happened to glance towards the back window, and there, much to her surprise, she saw the face of her hired man, Sim White, peering curiously in.
“There now, if that ain’t too much,” she said, flushing to the eyes with the force of a new discovery that had just dawned upon her. “If the critter ain’t getting jealous arter all; well, now, I never did! He thought that grand-looking gentleman a beau of mine. Just as likely as not—well, I won’t let him know that I ketched him peeking, anyhow.”
Aunt Polly busied herself about the fire—acting upon this generous resolution, till the door softly opened, and Sim thrust his head cautiously in, and gave a sharp look around the room. Aunt Polly smiled with grim satisfaction, and began to punch the fire vigorously, though she could not resist the temptation to cast side glances towards the door all the time.
“Where is he?—hush! speak in a whisper—where is the eternal rascal gone to? I’ve got a dozen stout fellows out in the yard, armed to the teeth with scythes and pitchforks, and a beautiful halter hitched to a beam in the barn, all ready. I shan’t trust to the law this time; it ain’t worth a towstring, or his hash’d ’a’ been settled long ago—come, speak out, where is he?”