“Well, my man,” he said, looking at the boy, “what’s your name?”
The idiot grinned importantly. “Tad,” he stuttered thickly,—“Tad Simpkins. What’s yourn?”
Harshaw sat for a moment in stunned surprise. Then all the discomforts of the situation vanished before the triumphs of this discovery. This—this great, well-fed, hearty creature, the forlorn, maltreated idiot depicted by the evidence in Mink Lorey’s trial; this, the pitiable boy drowned in the mill like a rat in a trap; this, the elusive spectre of the attorney-general’s science! The next moment it occurred to him that he must use special caution here; the motives that had led these people to harbor the idiot, if not to conceal him, were suspicious, and favored his theory in the trial—which he had adopted more from the poverty of his resources than a full credulity—that the retirement of the boy reputed drowned was prompted by a deep-seated enmity to Mink Lorey.
He turned to the woman, all his normal faculties on the alert.
“Well, that’s a fact, Mrs. Simpkins; your son ain’t plumb bright,—I can see that,—but he’s right there. I ought to tell you my name.”
“Mine ain’t Simpkins,” said the woman suddenly, responding quickly to his clever touch, “an’ Tad thar ain’t my son.” She was mixing corn-meal batter for bread in a wooden bowl; she stirred it energetically as she went on with a sort of partisan acrimony: “Mebbe he ain’t bright, ez ye call it, but I ain’t never hearn o’ Tad doin’ a mean thing yit,—not ter the chill’n, nor dogs, nor cats, nor nuthin’. He may be lackin’ in the head, but he ain’t lackin’ in the heart; thar’s whar’s the complaint o’ mos’ folks ez ain’t idjits. I dunno which air held gifted in the sight o’ the Lord. ’Tain’t in human wisdom ter say. Tad’ll make a better show at the jedgmint day’n many folks ez ’low they hev hed thar senses through life.”
“Ain’t no idjit, nuther,” protested Tad, gruffly.
“Well, my name’s Harshaw—Bob Harshaw.” The guest leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, looking steadily at her as he talked. She held her head on one side, listening eagerly, almost laboriously, sedulous that she should lose no point, showing how sharp had been her desire for him to give an account of himself. As he noticed this, he was more than ever sure that the household had some cause to fear the law. His vanity received a slight shock in the self-evident fact that she had never before heard of him. “I’m a lawyer from Shaftesville. I defended Mink Lorey when he was tried for drowning that chap.”
“Flung me in the water!” exclaimed Tad parenthetically.
“I hearn ’bout that,” said the woman. She had knelt on the broad hearth-stone, depositing the bowl beside her while she made up the pones in her hands, tossing them from one palm to the other, then placing them upon the hoe which smoked upon the hot live coals drawn out from the bed of the fire. “I war glad the rescuers tuk him out,” she continued, “fur Tad ain’t drownded.”