Dorinda stretched out her hand; the trees were unsteady before her; the few faint stars, no longer pulsating points of light, described a circle of dazzling gleams. She caught at the yoke on the neck of the oxen; she leaned upon the impassive beast, and then it seemed that every faculty was merged in the sense of hearing. The horse had moved away from the blacksmith, holding his head down among the boulders, and snuffing about for the water he remembered here with a disappointment almost pathetic.
'War he tuk?' demanded the preacher.
'Percisely so,' drawled the blacksmith, with a sub-current of elation in his tone.
There was a sudden change in Kelsey's manner. He turned fiery eyes upon the blacksmith. Light and life were in every line of his face. He drew himself up tense and erect; he stretched forth his hand with an accusing gesture.
''Twar you-uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy!'
'Lord, pa'son, how'd you-uns know that?' exclaimed the blacksmith. His manner combined a difference, which in civilization we recognise as respect for the cloth, with the easy familiarity, induced by the association since boyhood, of equals in age and station. 'I hedn't let on a word, hed I, D'rindy?'
The idea of an abnormal foreknowledge, mysteriously possessed, had its uncanny influences. The lonely woods were darkening about them. The stars seemed very far off. A rotting log in the midst of the débris of the stream, in a wild tangle of underbrush and shelving rocks, showed fox-fire and glowed in the glooms.
'I knowed,' said Kelsey, contemptuously waiving the suggestion of miraculous forecast, 'bekase the sher'ff hain't been in the Big Smoky for two weeks, an' that thar danglin' shadder o' his'n rid off las' Monday from Jeemes's Mill in Eskaqua Cove. An' the constable o' the deestric air sick abed. So I 'lowed 'twar you-uns.'
'An' why air it me more'n enny other man at the Settlemint?' The blacksmith's blood was rising; his sensibilities descried a covert taunt which as yet his slower intelligence failed to comprehend.
'An' ye hev rid with speed fur the sher'ff—or mebbe ter overhaul the dep'ty—ter come an' jail the prisoner afore he gits away.'