Guthrie, eager for his own peace of mind to believe him, drew a long sigh of relief. "I reckon I take up sech notions jes 'kase I am so all-fired jealous," he said. Then, with a half-laugh, "Litt never actially said nuthin' nohow—though she air ekal ter sayin' anything jes ter make me mo' jealous 'n I naterally be."
A mental mutiny possessed Shattuck. Was not this the conclusion that he had labored in all good faith to precipitate? Where, then, was his satisfaction in the logical result? Why should he cling in tenacious triumph to another inference, drawn from her fancy that it was he who had lingered outside her window to hear her sing? His pulses quickened with the thought that the very fallacy wore the reflected hues of her hope. There were other recollections pressing fast upon him—that she had remembered his words, had recounted his strange stories, the look in her eyes when she had caught down from the rack the rifle which she believed had endangered his life. Her dream had in some sort fulfilled itself. He had long appreciated the charm of her unique beauty, her sprite-like individuality. His feeling suddenly expanded, glowing like a bud into the rose at the first warm touch of the sun.
He looked down at Guthrie all oblivious of him, save for weariness of the importunity of his threats, his constancy of woe, his confidences. Shattuck was absorbed for the moment in his own emotion, and the world had suddenly slipped away.
Abstractions befitted the hour. One might hardly think to see it again—that sordid, dusty, daylight world, full of commerce and hard bargains, and rigorous conventions of wealth and standing, prosaic requisites of well-equipped happiness. It had rolled far away out of consciousness. Upon the low summits of the thick growths of the orchard gleamed the lustre of the dew and the yellow suffusions of the rising moon. The shadows had become dense, symmetrical, sharply outlined. The lilies, their chalices all pearl and gold, were so white and stately and tall as they stood where the moonbeams conjured them from out the darkness of the old-fashioned borders. The light drifted through the fringes of the pines, dark themselves as ever; and between their boughs, looking to the east, one could see a field of millet, glistening with all the charmed illusions of a silver lake. And how the mocking-bird loves the light! From out the midnight his jubilant song went up to meet it.
Shattuck remembered the moment, the scene, many a year afterward, the absorption that mulcted Guthrie's words of half their meaning, and more than half their weight.
"I hev got suthin' else ter say," he began, uneasily. "I dun'no' how ter tell it ter ye, nor whether I oughter tell it at all. Ef the sher'ff hed ever seen ye he'd know he war a fool; but thar war a man robbed an' kilt on the road that night whenst Steve Yates vamosed, an' folks b'lieve he done it."
The superficial attention with which Shattuck hearkened to this deepened the next moment.
"An' ez Steve Yates hed no idee o' goin' till ye sent him, the sher'ff thinks ye might hev sent him on that yerrand."
An inarticulate exclamation of amazement, of indignation, broke from Shattuck's lips. It was not Guthrie's intention to assuage his fears, but he felt constrained to be the apologist of the suspicion.
"Ef he hed ever seen ye wunst," he observed, "he'd know better. Of course he ain't never seen ye."