His mother sought to keep him from dwelling upon his troubles. “We won’t cross the bredge till we git thar,” she said. “Mebbe thar ain’t none ahead.” But her fears for his sake tortured her silent hours when he was away. When he came back from his work, there always awaited him a bright fire, a good supper, and cheerful words as well, although these were the most difficult to prepare. The dogs bounded about him, Tennessee clung to his hand, the boys were hilarious and loud.
By reason of their mother’s silence on the subject, that Birt might be better able to go, and work, and hold up his head among the men who suspected him, the children for a time knew nothing of what had happened.
Now Rufe, although his faults were many and conspicuous, was not lacking in natural affection. Had he understood that a cloud overhung Birt, he could not have been so merry, so facetious, so queerly and quaintly bad as he was on his visits to the tanyard, which were peculiarly frequent just now. If Birt had had the heart for it, he might have enjoyed some of Rufe’s pranks at the expense of Andy Byers. The man had once found a sort of entertainment in making fun of Rufe, and this had encouraged the small boy to retaliate as best he could.
At this time, however, Byers suddenly became the gravest of men. He took little notice of the wiles of his elfish antagonist, and whenever he fell into a snare devised by Rufe, he was irritable for a moment, and had forgotten it the next. He had never a word or glance for Birt, who marveled at his conduct. He seemed perpetually brooding upon some perplexity. Occasionally in the midst of his work he would stand motionless for five minutes, the two-handled knife poised in his grasp, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his shaggy brows heavily knitted, his expression doubting, anxious.
The tanner commented upon this inactivity, one day. “Hev ye tuk root thar, Andy?” he asked.
Byers roused himself with a start. “Naw,” he replied reflectively, “but I hev been troubled in my mind some, lately, an’ I gits ter studyin’ powerful wunst in a while.”
As he bent to his work, scraping the two-handled knife up and down the hide stretched over the wooden horse, he added, “I hev got so ez I can’t relish my vittles sca’cely, bein’ so tormented in my mind, an’ my sleep air plumb broke up; ’pears like ter me ez I hev got a reg’lar gift fur the nightmare.”
“Been skeered by old Mis’ Price’s harnt lately?” Rufe asked suddenly from his perch upon the wood-pile.
Byers whirled round abruptly, fixing an astonished gaze upon Rufe, unmindful that the knife slipped from his grasp, and fell clanking upon the ground.
CHAPTER IX.