A sudden comprehension was dawning in Shattuck's eyes. He leaned forward, and laid his hand on Guthrie's shoulder. "Now go slow, Fee," he said, soothingly. "Who is this man? Not I, and this I swear!"
The imperious face, its pallor distinct in the lamplight falling upon it from within, the rest of the figure shadowy in the black darkness without, looked up at him with a scathing contempt wrought in every feature.
"An' so I swear that I'd be justified ef I war ter put a bullet through yer heart, an' let yer soul go down ter hell with that word ter damn ye ter all eternity!"
Shattuck withdrew his hand, frowning heavily. "Look here, my fine fellow, this is strong language. If I didn't believe you are under some strange mistake, I'd make you eat your words syllable by syllable. What do you mean?"
"But I don't want ter murder ye," Guthrie went on, as if Shattuck had not spoken. "I can't shoot ye down without a weepon in yer han', like Mis' Yates tried ter do, though ye richly desarve it. Git yer shootin'-iron an' come out—come out an' stan' up fur yerse'f." He waved his hand with the pistol in it toward the more open space beyond the shrubbery. "Come out, or I'll shoot ye ez ye set thar."
"Not one step will I stir until you tell me why you say that I have come between you and Letitia."
"Bekase she told me so."
Shattuck's unconscious reliance upon his mental supremacy, his equipment of delicate tact, his assurance of a pleasing personality, which was half his courage, began to give way. He had yet that physical self-respect which would enable him to meet his enemy without a pusillanimous shrinking, but he no longer hoped to command the adroitness to evade the event. Still he strove to be calm.
"Impossible! Now, what did she say?" he demanded, in a reasonable voice. Somehow, he had the key to Guthrie's confidence. Even now it opened to him.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a voice of despair, throwing up the arm that still grasped the weapon, "I knowed it ez much from what she didn't say ez what she did. I seen it in her face. I hearn it in her voice. I ain't blind! I ain't deef! An' then"—every line in his face hardened—"she tole me how ye kem an' stood outside the winder ter listen whilst she sung, an' seein' yer face suddint, lookin' in through the batten shutter, she didn't know ye a-fust—not till arterward, whenst hearin' yer pickaxe in the Leetle People's graveyard, did she know 'twar you-uns. An' ye war waitin' fur the moon ter rise. An', damn ye! what d'ye want ter hear her sing fur?"