Jeb sat down on a keg close to the chimney, and the perturbed hosts glanced at one another.
“Waal, stranger,” said Marvin, “ye hev gone an’ put us in a peck o’ troubles, ter kem interruptin’ us in this fur place, whar we hev been hunted an’ hounded ter.”
“Yes, sir,” remarked “hongry Jeb,” “same ez the varmint, ez be specially lef’ out’n salvation by the Bible.”
Marvin cast a glance over his shoulder at Harshaw. Then he continued, evidently striving to put the worst possible interpretation on the situation and to work himself into a rage: “We-uns air a-thinkin’ ez ye mought be a spy fur the revenuers.”
Harshaw let his head fall back on the pillow. His resonant, burly laugh rang out, jarring the rafters, and rousing in its hearty jocundity the reciprocity of a smile on “hongry Jeb’s” cadaverous face. Even Marvin, casting another hasty look over his shoulder, was mollified.
“Ye’d better be keerful how ye wake Philetus up, with his nap haffen out; ye’ll ’low ye air neighborin’ a catamount,” he admonished his guest.
“I tell you,” said Harshaw, clasping his hands behind his yellow head as he lay at length, “you fellows live up here in these lonesome woods till your brains are addled. Why on earth would I, single-handed, mind you, a lawyer, a member of the legislature, with a good big farm of my own and half a dozen houses in town,” (he had never before thought to brag of them,) “risk myself here, for the little reward I could get if—mighty big if, folks—if I could get away again?”
He lifted his eyes, with a bluff challenge of fair play.
“You know who I am. You’ve seen me in Shaftesville. You know my farm down there in Kildeer County, on Owl Creek. Spy! Shucks! it makes me laugh. Do the quality often come spying for the revenuers in this neighborhood?”