Rufe stared in his turn, not comprehending Byers’s surprise.
“
Tom
,” he reiterated presently, with mocking explicitness. “Tom Byers - I reckon ye knows him. That thar freckled-faced, snaggled-toothed, red-headed Tom Byers, ez lives at yer house. I reckon ye
mus
’ know him.”
“Tom tole ye -
what
?” asked the tanner, puzzled by Byers’s grave, anxious face, and Rufe’s mysterious sneers.
Rufe broke into the liveliest cackle. “Tom, he ’lowed ter me ez he war tucked up in the trundle-bed, fast asleep, that night when his dad got home from old Mis’ Price’s house, whar he had been ter hear her las’ words. Tom, he ’lowed he war dreamin’ ez his gran’dad hed gin him a calf - Tom say the calf war spotted red an’ white - an’ jes’ ez he war a-leadin’ it home with him, his dad kem racin’ inter the house with sech a rumpus ez woke him up, an’ he never got the calf along no furder than the turn in the road. An’ thar sot his dad in the cheer, declarin’ fur true ez he hed seen old Mis’ Price’s harnt in the woods, an’ b’lieved she mus’ be dead afore now. An’ though thar war a right smart fire on the h’a’th, he war shiverin’ an’ shakin’ over it, jes’ the same ez ef he war out at the wood-pile, pickin’ up chips on a frosty mornin’.”