They had never quarreled before Haines “got religion” and took to “prayin’ fur the power.” He had never thought the juggler chargeable with these differences, but the fallacy now occurred to him that they might have been precipitated by Royce’s ridicule of him as a wily device to rid her of her lover. His face grew hot and angry. There was fire in his eyes. His lips parted and his breath came quick.
“He hev toled off Tynes too,” resumed Knowles, with a melancholy intonation. “He hev got all the lures and witchments of the devil at command. I kem by the church-house awhile ago, an’ I hearn him an’ Tynes in thar, speakin’ an’ readin’. An’ I sez ter myself, sez I, ‘Pore Owen Haines, up yander in the woods, hev got nuther his frien’, now, nor his sweetheart. Him an’ Phemie keeps company no mo’ in this worl’.’”
There was a sudden twitch of Haines’s features, as if these piercing words had been with some material sharpness thrust in amongst sensitive tissues. It was all true, all true.
The iron was hot, and Peter Knowles struck. “That ain’t the wust,” he said, leaning forward and bringing his face with blazing eyes close to his companion. “This hyar juggler hev killed a man, an’ flung his bones inter the quicklime in my rock-house.”
Haines, with a galvanic start, turned, pale and aghast, upon his companion. He could only gasp, but Knowles went on convulsively and without question: “I s’picioned him from the fust. He stopped thar at the cave whar I war burnin’ lime the night o’ the show, an’ holped ter put it in outer the weather bein’ ez the rain would slake it. An’ he axed me ef quicklime would sure burn up a dead body. An’ when I told him, he turned as he went away an’ looked back, smilin’ an’ sorter motionin’ with his hand, an’ looked back agin, an’ looked back.”
He reached out slowly for the stick with the bundle tied at the end, and dragged it toward him, the breath of the scalding lime perceptible as it was drawn near.
“Las’ week, one evenin’ late,” he said in a lowered voice and with his eyes alight and glancing, “hevin’ kep’ a watch on this young buzzard, an’ noticin’ him forever travelin’ the New Helveshy road what ain’t no business o’ his’n, I ’lowed I’d foller him. An’ he kerries a bundle. He walks fast an’ stops short, an’ studies, an’ turns back suddint, an’ stops agin, an’ whirls roun’, an’ goes on. An’ his face looks like death! An’ sometimes he stops short to sigh, ez ef he couldn’t get his breath. But he don’t go ter New Helveshy. He goes ter my cave. An’ he hev got breath enough ter fling away that tormented big boulder, an’ toss in these gyarmints, an’ churn the lime over ’em with a stick till he hed ter hold his hand over his eyes ter keep his eyesight, an’ fling back the boulder, an’ run off faster ’n a fox along the road ter Sims’s.”
There was a long silence as the two men looked into each other’s eyes.
“What air ye tellin’ this ter me fur?” said Haines at last, struggling with a mad impulse of hope—of joy, was it? For if this were true,—and true it must be,—the spurious supplantation in Euphemia’s affections might soon be at an end. If her love could not endure ridicule, would it condone crime? All might yet be well; justice tardily done, the law upheld; the intruder removed from the sphere where he had occasioned such woe, and the old sweet days of love’s young dream to be lived anew.
“Fur the Marster’s sarvice,” said the wily hypocrite. “I sez ter myself, ‘Owen Haines won’t see the right tromped on. He won’t see the ongodly flourish. He won’t see the wolf a-lopin’ through the fold. He won’t hear in the night the blood o’ Abel cryin’ from the groun’ agin the guilty Cain, an’ not tell the sher’ff what air no furder off, jes’ now, ’n ‘Possum Cross-Roads.’”