“And this mornin’, just when I was clearin’ the breakfast dishes, who should walk in but old Betsy. She didn’t look at me, but went right on in where Granny and auntie were. Granny says she kept mutterin’, and she heard her say somethin’ about Boy findin’ Daft Davie one time when he was lost and bringin’ him home. And all the time she was pourin’ some stuff from a bottle into a cup. Granny says it was the spell she was sayin’. Anyway, she made auntie take some of the stuff, and, Bill, she has been asleep and restin’ fine ever since.”
Paisley got up from his chair and took the girl’s face between his hands.
“Glossie,” he said, patting her cheeks, “your auntie is goin’ to get well. I ain’t carin’ a darn whether it is witchcraft or no witchcraft. Guess I better go outside and hunt up Boy and Mac, ’cause I’m goin’ to holler some soon. Now, don’t you forget your promise, Gloss.”
Paisley stepped out into the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon. Down in the far end of the potato-patch he saw Big McTavish and Boy working. Beside them stood Daft Davie, his inseparable companion, the coon, in his arms. As he watched them he saw the big man bend and pat the child’s yellow hair, then point toward the house. But Davie shook his head and pointed eastward.
“He’s tellin’ Mac in his way what maybe I ought to tell him in mine,” thought Paisley. “But I won’t; anyway, not yet a while.”
CHAPTER XIX
Of the Tribe of Broadcrook
Mr. Smythe stood with, his back to the fireplace, his long arms behind his back, with sharp elbows almost touching, and claw-like hands clasped together. The evenings were getting chill. Already the first snows had come. The trees were bare and creaked in the wind, and the skies were lead-colored and cold. In the early dusk the two-dozen gray shacks of Bridgetown looked grayer and lonelier than ever. Mr. Smythe glanced at the long clock near the door and then out of the smoky window, his pointed nose fairly sniffing the wind and his big ears fairly pointed forward in a listening attitude. The long figure of a man, half reclining on a pile of furs at the end of the counter, stirred, and the substance of a quid of black tobacco hissed into the hickory coals, passing perilously close to the clasped hands of Bridgetown’s general merchant. Mr. Smythe smiled with his thin lips and looked murder with his little weak eyes. Then he coughed.
“If you wish to make Bushwhackers’ Place to-night,” he said, addressing his tardy visitor, “you’d better be starting out on your way.”
No response from the man on the furs, except another hiss in the coals.
“Looks as though we’d have a big snowstorm,” suggested Smythe.