'Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kelsey,' he began, with the air of having washed his hands of all responsibility. 'God would never hev fursook ye ef ye hedn't fursook the good cause fust. Ye air ter be cast down—ye who hev stood high.'
There was a momentary silence.
'Will ye come?' said the sheriff, smiling fixedly, 'or had ye ruther be fetched?'
The deputy had a pair of handcuffs dangling officiously. They rattled in rude contrast with the accustomed sounds of the place.
Kelsey hesitated. Then, after a fierce internal struggle, he submitted meekly, and was led out from among them.
XI.
It is seldom, in this world at least, that a man who absents himself from church repents it with the fervour of regret which Amos James experienced when he heard of the unexpected proceedings at the Notch.
'Sech a rumpus—dad-burn my luck—I mought never git the chance ter see agin!' he declared with a pious sense of deprivation. And he thought it had been a poor substitute to sit on the doorstep all the forenoon Sunday, 'ez lonesome ez a b'ar in a hollow tree,' because his heart was yet so sore and sensitive that he could not see Dorinda's pink sun-bonnet without a rush of painful emotion, or her face without remembering how she looked when he talked of the rescue of Rick Tyler.
The 'gang o' men'—actively described by his mother as 'lopin' roun' the mill'—lingered long in conclave this morning. Perhaps their views had a more confident and sturdy effect from being propounded at the top of the voice, since the insistent whirr of the busy old mill drowned all efforts in a lower tone; but it was very generally the opinion that Micajah Green had transcended all the license of his official character in making the arrest at the place and time he had selected.