“He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation an' fur Lee-yander's short-comin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air about ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the turnin' away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.' Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin no longer.”
His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.
“Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!” she exclaimed, with a pride which, as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's reputation as a high-tempered man and a “mighty handy fighter,” and with implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.
“Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley,” Nehemiah gasped, as he made haste to qualify his asseveration. “I only charge you with havin' sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not ye so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him! His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. I never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty.”
He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. “Now, I put it to you, Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?—jes be-you-ti-ful field weather!”
Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed face—a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful; one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the mountain “a-courtin,” She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it.
Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph. “Aha, not ploughin'! But Ty is ploughin', I seen him in the field. An' Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin' through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An' under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it.” He mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. “He never looked up wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' a-ping, pang, ping, pang,” in a high falsetto, “went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole owel, a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what ping, pang, ping, pang meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in the bresh, an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified 'fore even sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez followed him.”
“How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?” demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict proof.
“Oh-h! by the fambly favor,” protested the gaunt and hard-featured Nehemiah, capably. “I knowed the Yerby eye.”
“He hev got his mother's eyes.” Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her stand-point with a vengeance. “He hev got his mother's be-you-ti-ful blue eyes and her curling, silken brown hair—sorter red; little Yerby in that, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will.”