“I never sent no spy,” faltered Alethea.
“Thar now! What did I tell ye!” he broke out, laughing disdainfully; the woman added a high, shrill, unmirthful refrain; even Serena the pullet, stepping about in the smoke on her long, yellow feet and in her abbreviated garments, cackled scornfully.
“Ye may thank yer blessed stars,” cried the woman scathingly,—she could hold silence no longer—“ez ye done nuthin’ agin we-uns. An’ the revenuers never raided our still, nor got nare drap o’ our liquor, nor tuk nuthin’ o’ ourn. Yer bones would be a-bleachin’ on the hillside ef they hed! Jes’ afore yer spy kem them white-livered men—Sam thar, an’ the t’other distillers—war a-talkin’ ’bout how they could make ye hesh up yer mouth, ez ye wouldn’t keep it shet yerse’f. They ’lowed it never seemed right handy ter them ter shoot a woman same ez a man, an’ I jes’ up-ed an’ tole ’em ez ye desarved no better ’n a bullet through that yaller head o’ yourn, an’ they could git a shot at ye enny evenin’ whenst ye war a-drivin’ up the cow. An’ I ’lowed ez whenst a woman went a-meddlin’ an’ informin’ like a man, let her take what a man hev ter take. Naw, sir! but they mus’ run away, ’count o’ a meddler like you-uns, an’ go live somwhar else! An’ I hed ter leave my home, an’ the three graves o’ my dead chill’n, yander on the rise, ez lonesome an’ ez meagre-lookin’ ez ef they war three pertater hills.”
She burst into a tumult of tears. The smoke wafted down, obscuring her,—there was commotion in its midst, for the wind was rising,—and her sobs sounded from out the invisibility that had effaced the earth as if some spirit of grief were abroad in it.
“Shet up, M’ria! Ye talk like ye hed no mo’ sense ’n a sheep. The chill’n ain’t in them graves,” Marvin said, with the consolations of a sturdy orthodoxy.
“Thar leetle bones is,” said the spirit of grief from the densities of the clouds.
And he could not gainsay this.
She wept on persistently for the little deserted bones. He could not feel as she did, yet he could understand her feeling. His under-jaw dropped a little; some stress of melancholy and solemnity was on his face, as if a saddened retrospection were evoked for him, too. But it was a recollection which his instinct was to throw off, rather than to cherish as a precious sorrow, jealously exacting for it the extremest tribute of sighs and tears.
“Lethe,” he said suddenly, with a cheerful note, “bein’ ez they never cotch us, did they pay ye ennything ez informer? I ain’t right sure how the law stands on that p’int. The law ’pears ter me ter be a mighty onstiddy, contrariwise contrivance, an’ the bes’ way ter find out ennything sartain sure ’bout’n it air ter ’sperience it. Did they pay ye ennything?”
“I never informed the revenuers,” declared Alethea, once more.