“But you could give me some idea.”
“I know I turned down a three-hundred-dollar offer a couple o’ months ago.”
The Reverend Tough whistled softly. “The Lord’s servants,” he said, “are notoriously lacking in the world’s goods, Mr. Bard. I fear I would have to seek a cheaper animal.”
There was a well-considered pause before Bard spoke.
“You better come down and see her in the daylight,” he said. “You might not want her. But I’d like to see you with a good horse—your profession calls for it.”
“I think so, too.”
“And when it comes to that, I wouldn’t be against knocking off, say, a hundred, if you really want her.”
“Really! That’s good of you. Now, look here, Mr. Bard, I’ll come down to-morrow and see her. It’s comforting to know that a man in these days can get a little for love, when he hasn’t got the price.”
With mutual expressions of good will their conversation ended and Mauney listened to the preacher’s buggy squeaking down the clay road toward Beulah. He walked to the front window of his room and watched it until it disappeared in the mist that had blown westward from the swamp. Then his gaze moved to the Lantern Marsh, a grey, desolate waste under a fog through which the moon struggled. His nature recoiled from the hated picture.
Soon he slept. He dreamed of his father—and of a warm stream of blood he could not see, but only feel in his hands.