It seemed to Mrs. Purvine, the next day, that many immediate requisites were stowed away temporarily in the bedroom. She was continually on the alert to prevent Jerry or the boys from invading it. “Keep out’n that thar bedroom. I ain’t keerin’ ef ye ain’t got no symblin’ seed. I ain’t goin’ ter let ye s’arch thar. I hev got all my fine quilts what I pieced myself—’ceptin’ with a leetle help from Lethe Sayles—a-hangin’ up thar ter air. Hang ’em up in the sun, ye say? Who d’ye reckon wants ter fade them gay colors out?”
When at last Jerry desisted in deference to this new strange whim, one of the boys was beset with anxiety to get his shoes which he had set away there.
“That’s the way the shoe-leather goes,—walkin’ on it,” said aunt Dely reasonably. “Naw, sir! save them soles, an’ go bar’foot. The weather’s warm now.”
The youngest, the most pertinacious and hard to resist, was tumultuous to get a certain “whang o’ leather” which Bluff needed to complete his gear, in order to continue ploughing.
“I ain’t a-keerin’ ef one o’ Bluff’s horns war lef’ in thar, an’ he couldn’t wink without it. I ain’t goin’ ter hev them quilts disturbed.”
She presently became drowsy, because of her long vigil of the preceding night, and placed her chair before the door that no one might enter without rousing her, and thus, a solemn sentinel, she alternately knitted and nodded away the afternoon.
It was a great relief to her when the house was still, the family all asleep, and the fugitive’s meal prepared. She had taken special pains with it, albeit she went about it yawningly, and had filled a tin pail with provisions that he might carry with him.
She waited ten minutes or so after all was ready. She listened as she knelt on the hearth. There was no sound from within but the stertorous breathing of the sleepers in the roof-room. From without only the murmur of the river, the croaking of a frog, the stir of the wind came in at the open back door, through which she could see the white moonshine, lying in lonely splendor upon the dark, prosaic expanse of the newly ploughed fields. She rose and closed it, that the fugitive might not be revealed to the casual eye of any nocturnal fisherman, striking through her domain on his way to the river bank. Then she went to the bedroom door.
As she tapped on it, the door moved under the pressure, and she saw that it was unbuttoned on the inside. “That thar keerless boy ought ter hev buttoned this door!” she exclaimed. “The sher’ff could hev gone right in and nabbed him whilst he war asleep. Ye Mink! Mink!”
There was no answer.