“Ye can't fool me,” he stoutly asseverated. “Ye think mo' o' him 'n o' me, kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an' fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, hotel! Now I'll tell ye what he is—I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's runnin' from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin' ter buy.”
She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.
He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.
“It's gospel sure,” he cried. “Fur this very evenin' I met a gang o' men an' the sheriff's deputy down yander by the sulphur spring 'bout sundown, an' he 'lowed ez they war a-sarchin' fur a criminal ez war skulkin' round hyarabout lately—ez they wanted a man fur hevin' c'mitted murder.”
“But ye didn't accuse him, surely; ye hed no right ter s'picion him. Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn't! Oh, Uncle Sim!”
Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly away, and started toward the house.
“Ye needn't go tattlin' on me,” he said, roughly pushing her aside. “I'll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain't 'shamed o' what I done. I'll tell him. I'll tell him myself.” And animated with this intention to forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and into the house.
It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest credentials—a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his life should he resist arrest.
Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to the barnyard.
It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place, while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves and moss—climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his posse, following the circuitous mountain road.