She once more leaned on the loom behind her, and bowed her head on her hands.
“No!—no!” cried Alethea. She caught her breath in quick gasps; for one moment she seemed losing consciousness. The mountains in the background, the faint stars in the sky, the shadowy roof, the swaying vines, the raccoon in their midst with his grotesque grin, were before her suddenly as if she had just awakened. She had sunk into a chair.
“Ye kin call me a liar! So do!” cried Elvira, lifting her head defiantly. “But he went hisself down ter the court-house an’ told it hisself, an’ wanted ter gin his gun an’ mare ef they’d let him off.” She laughed—a dainty little laugh of scorn. “That’s what he ’lowed the idjit war wuth. But my dad ’lows ez the law sets store on the idjit’s life same ez folks ginerally.”
Alethea felt as if she were turning to stone. Was it her advice that had led him into danger? Was it her fatal insistence that he should see the right as it was revealed to her?
She sprang to her feet, the eager questions crowding to her lips.
“Ye shet up, Lethe!” said her step-mother, entertained by the unwonted spectacle of Elvira’s dramatic grief, and not caring to hear again the news of the tragedy already recited. As to Mink, he had only been overtaken by the disasters which must have fallen upon him sooner or later, and he was in many ways a good riddance. This phase was uppermost in her mind when she said, “Ye see now what gals git fur goin’ agin thar elders’ word. I’ll be bound, Elviry, ’twarn’t yer mother’s ch’ice fur ye ter take Mink an’ gin Pete Rood the go-by.”
“That it warn’t!” cried the repentant Elvira, with a gush of tears. “I wish I hed bided by her word! I reckon I war born lackin’! I hev been sech a fool!”
Mrs. Sayles turned to look at Alethea and nod her head in triumphant confirmation. Then she remarked consolingly, “Waal, waal, I reckon ye kin toll Pete Rood back.”
“I dunno,” sobbed Elvira. “I met him yestiddy at the cross-roads in Piomingo Cove, an’ he jes’ turned his head aside an’ walked by ’thout nare word. I wish—oh, I wish I hed never seen that thar minkish Mink.”