“Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed, jumping precipitately backward on her long, attenuated legs, “yander’s Lethe Sayles!”
Both the man and the woman started violently,—not because of the matter of the disclosure, but of its manner, as was manifested in his rebuke.
“By Gosh, Sereny! ef ye ain’t mighty nigh skeered me ter death!” he cried angrily. “S’pose it air Lethe Sayles!” He bowed his body grotesquely amidst the smoke, as he emphasized his reproof. “Air she ennything so powerful oncommon ez ye hev ter jump ez sprightly ez ef ye hed stepped on a rattlesnake, an’ squeech out that-a-way? Howdy, Lethe,” he added, with an odd contrast of a calm voice and a smooth manner, as if Alethea were deaf to these amenities. “Thrivin’, I s’pose?”
Alethea faltered that she was well, and said no more. The imperative consciousness of all that she had done against him, of all for which she feared him, prevailed for a time. She knew that it would have been wiser to venture some commonplace civility, and then go. But that insistent conscience, strong within her, forbade this. She was all unprepared now for the disclosure of her testimony in the court-room, but the fact that she had ever intended to warn him made it seem as if this were due. She felt as if she had missed a certain fortification of her courage in that she had not had the privilege of trembling over the prospect, of familiarizing herself with it, of approaching it slowly, but none the less surely, by lessening degrees of trepidation. She wondered that he did not look at her with more of the indignation which she knew he must feel toward her. Bitterness, however, was acridly manifested in the woman’s manner, her averted head, her sedulous silence. She continued industriously pulling the corn, as if no word had been spoken, no creature stood by. The gallinaceous girl, silent too, returned to her work, but often looked askance at Alethea over her shoulder.
The man spoke presently. His face and figure were blurred now in the smoke. It was as if a shadow had purloined a sarcastic voice. Alethea’s nerves were unstrung by the surprise of the meeting, and the fact that she could see only this elusive suggestion of his presence harassed and discomposed her.
“Waal, Lethe, I dunno ez I be s’prised ter see ye. I hev seen ye sech a many times whenst I never expected ye,—startin’ up yander at Boke’s barn ez suddint ez ef ye hed yer headquarters in the yearth or the sky. An’ jes’ at this junctry, whenst we air a-tryin’ ter steal our own corn away from hyar, ye kem a-boundin’ out’n the smoke, like ye hed no abidin’ place more ’n a witch or that thar Herder on Thunderhead, or sech harnts. I never see yer beat ez a meddler. Satan ain’t no busier with other folkses’ souls.”
She made no reply. The shifting vapor hid the tree where the bright-eyed coon hung fast by his claws, and the wheezing yapping of the foiled dogs besieging his stronghold seemed strangely loud and near since they were invisible.
The shucks rustled sibilantly. The ears of maize fell with a monotonous sound upon the heaps in the turn row.
“What did the revenuers do when they kem up the mounting?” Marvin asked suddenly. His tone was all alert now with curiosity. He could reserve his rebukes till his craving for gossip should be satisfied. Conversation, a fine art elsewhere, assumes the dignity of a privilege in these sparsely settled wilds, where its opportunities are scant.