When together, Briscoe and Bayne had scant facial resemblance; but apart, that stamp of consanguinity might easily recall for each the face of the other. Bayne, with his wonted subtlety of divination, replied at once, "No, but Mr. Briscoe was my cousin."
"Oh, ho—oh, ho—I see," the old man said, tractable and easily convinced. "I know—Lawd! I got reason ter know that Briscoe's dead. I war afeared o' seein' su'thin' oncommon—his harnt, or some sech. The idee shuk me powerful. I hev had a fever lately. Lemme sit down—I—I—can't stand up. I been hevin' a misery lately in my breast-bone—oh!"—he waved his hand in the air with a pathetic, grasping gesture—"me breath is gone—me breath, me breath——"
He sank down on an iron bench at one side on the velvety turf and feebly gasped.
"I'll get some brandy," Gladys said in a low tone to Lillian, and sped swiftly up the steps toward the house.
Suddenly Clenk partially lifted himself and dived into one of the pockets of his loose coat. He brought up a little red shoe, all tarnished and tobacco-stained, and held it out to Lillian with a faint and flickering smile of bestowal, certain of gratitude as well as recognition. "Does you-uns know that leetle foot?"
Lillian swayed for a moment as if she might fall. Then, with a piercing shriek, she darted forward and seized it from his shaking grasp. She held it up to the light, and as Gladys returned, herself bearing the tray with the glass and decanter, Lillian convulsively clutched her arm and, speechless and trembling, pointed to the name in tarnished gilt on the inside of the sole—her own shoemaker, who had constructed the delicate little hand-sewed slipper!
"Where is he now—where is this child?" Bayne demanded precipitately, his own breath short, his pulses beating in his temples till the veins seemed near bursting.
"I can't rightly say now," the old man drawled; "but—but I kin tell you where we-uns lef' him. 'T war a awful bis'ness, that crackin' off Briscoe—that warn't in the plan at all. We-uns war after the revenuer. What right had he ter bust our still an' break up our wu'm and pour our mash an' singlings out on the ground? Ain't it our'n? Ain't the corn an' apples an' peaches our'n? Didn't we grow 'em?—an' what right hev the gover'ment ter say we kin eat 'em, but can't bile 'em—eh? They b'long ter we-uns—an' gosh! the gover'ment can't hender! But we never meant no harm ter Briscoe. Lawd! Lawd! that warn't in the plan at all. But the child viewed it, an', by gosh! I b'lieve that leetle creetur could hev told the whole tale ez straight as a string—same ez ef he war twenty-five year old. That deedie of a baby-child talked sense—horse-sense—he did, fur a fack!"
"Where—where——" Lillian was using every power of her being to restrain the screams of wild excitement, to sustain the suspense.
"Where did you last see him?" asked Bayne. He had grown deadly white, and the old man, lifting his face, gazed vaguely from one to the other. Their intense but controlled excitement seemed subtly imparted to his nerves. The details of the tragedy had become hackneyed in his own consciousness, but their significance, their surfeit of horror, revived on witnessing their effect on others.