Royce felt no antagonism toward the man, and he realized that they all shared his standpoint, but he was not ill pleased that he should seem to be jealously decrying Euphemia’s lover.
“Phemie don’t ’low he be a fool, I’ll be bound,” said old Cobbs. “I hev viewed a many a man ’counted a puffick idjit, mighty nigh, at the sto’ an’ the blacksmith shop, yit at home ’mongst his wimminfolks he be a mo’ splendugious pusson ’n the President o’ the Nunited States.”
“I reckon Jack’s right,” remarked Beck. “I reckon they’ll marry.” This stroke, he reflected with satisfaction, cut not only the juggler, but Ormsby also, notwithstanding the fact that it was the theory advanced by the young mountaineer himself.
“I’ll bet my hat they don’t,” declared the juggler eagerly.
This suggestion of superior knowledge, of certainty, on the part of a stranger angered Jack Ormsby, who vibrated between his red-hot jealousy of the juggler on one side and of Owen Haines on the other.
“We-uns know Phemie Sims better’n ye do!” he said, as if this were an argument despite the chameleon-hued changes of the feminine mind. “Ye never seen her till ye kem ter Etowah Cove.”
“How do you know I didn’t?” retorted the juggler warily. He sat leaning forward, his hat in his hand; his hair, grown longer than its wont, was crumpled on his forehead; he looked at Ormsby with a glitter of triumph in his red-brown eyes.
“Whar’d ye kem from jes’ afore ye got hyar?” demanded Ormsby huskily.
“I don’t know why you are so inquisitive, my son,” returned the juggler, airily flouting, “but since you wish to know—from Piomingo Cove.”
This was true in a literal sense. Since he had been here, and had sought, with that instinct natural to civilized people, to grasp the details of the surrounding country,—some specimens of the genus not being able to sleep until the points of the compass are satisfactorily indicated and arranged in their well-regulated minds,—he had learned that the rugged valley which he had traversed, with only another cove intervening before he reached Etowah, was Piomingo Cove. They all remembered Euphemia’s recent visit there. The inference was but too plain. He had doubtless seen her at her grandmother’s house down in Piomingo Cove, and, fascinated by her beauty and charm, he had followed her here. And here he lingered,—what so natural! A proud, headstrong maiden like Euphemia was not to be won in a day; and should he leave her, with Jack Ormsby and Owen Haines inciting each other to haste and urgency, were matters likely to remain until his return as they were now? Most of the lime-burners’ clique never hereafter believed aught but that this was the solution of the mystery of the juggler’s sojourn in Etowah Cove.