Rick Tyler was dismayed by the result of his jealousy and the strange 'lesson' that Dorinda had learned. He found her inflexible. She reminded him sternly of the conditions of her promise and that he had failed. And when he protested that he was jealous because he loved her so, she said she valued no love that for her sake grudged a word, not in generosity, but in simple justice, to liberate an innocent man in the rigours of a terrible doom. And when at this man's very name he was seized with his accustomed impetuous anger, she looked at him with a cool aloof scrutiny that might have expressed a sheer curiosity. It bewildered and tamed him. He had never heard of a Spartan. He only thought of her as immovable, and as infinitely remote from his plane as the great dome of the mountain. He remembered that she had always softened to his misfortunes, and he talked of how he had suffered. But she said that was all over now, and he had been 'mighty lucky.' He sought to appeal to her in her own behalf, and reminded her how she had loved him through it all, how she would have married him, despite the fierce pursuit of the law. She had loved him; he would not forget that.
'No,' she said drearily. 'I never loved ye. I loved what I thunk ye war. But ye warn't that—nuthin' like it! Ye war suthin' else. I war jes' in love with my own foolishness.'
Poor Dorinda! Alas, for the fair ideals! these things are transient.
He went away at last, indignant and amazed. Once he thought of offering to make the affidavit, not cognizant of its fatal defect, and then the conviction took hold upon him that this melancholy was her deep disappointment because she loved the man she sought to aid. And sometimes he could not believe he had lost her heart. And yet when he would go back, her dull indifference to his presence would convince him alike that he was naught to her now and that he had been supplanted.
His contradictions of feeling began to crystallize into a persistent perversity. He took pleasure in denying the story she had told of his escape, and many people hardly knew which version to believe. He congratulated Brother Jake Tobin one evening at the cabin on having turned Hi Kelsey out of the church, and called him a wolf in sheep's clothing.
And then for his pains he was obliged to listen to her defence of the absent man; she declared the parson was like one of the prophets—like some man in the Bible. As to that confession he had made in the church, 'twar plain he war out'n his head.'
Meantime Brother Jake Tobin discreetly bent his attention upon the honey and fried chicken on the supper table, and Rick Tyler fumed in silence.
After the news of the nolle prosequi, Rick went about the mountain with his former large liberty. His step-brothers were desirous of obliterating his recollection of their avoidance, and made him a present of several head of cattle and some hogs. He lived at home among them, and began to have prospects for the future.
He was planning with the younger Cayces to start a new still, for a region is particularly safe for that enterprise immediately after a visit from the revenue officers, their early return being improbable. And he talked about a house-raising while the weather held fine, and before snow.
'I'm a-thinkin' 'bout gittin' married, Pete, ter a gal over yander ter the Settlemint,' he said, looking for the effect on Dorinda.