“Nuthin’ would do Ethelindy,” her granny lifted an accusatory voice, still knitting briskly, though she looked rebukingly over her spectacles at the cowering girl, “when that thar Union dee-tachmint rid into Tanglefoot Cove like a rat into a trap——”
“Yes,” interposed Mrs. Brusie, “through mistakin’ it fur Greenbrier Cove.”
“Nuthin’ would do Ethelindy but she mus’ up an’ offer to show the officer the way out by that thar cave what tunnels through the spur of the mounting down todes the bluffs, what sca’cely one o’ the boys left in the Cove would know now.”
“Else he’d hev been capshured,” Ethelinda humbly submitted.
“Yes”—the ruffles of her grandmother’s cap were terrible to view as they wagged at her with the nodding vehemence of her prelection—“an’ you will be capshured now.”
The girl visibly winced, and one of the three small boys lying about the hearth, sharing the warm flags with half a dozen dogs, whimpered aloud in sympathetic fright. The others preserved a breathless, anxious silence.
“You-uns mus’ be powerful keerful ter say nuthin’ ‘bout Ethelindy’s hand in that escape of the Fed’ral cavalry”—the old grandfather roused himself to a politic monition. “Mebbe the raiders won’t find it out—an’ the folks in the Cove dun’no’ who done it, nuther.”
“Yes, bes’ be keerful, sure,” the gran-dame rejoined. “Fur they puts wimmin folks in jail out yander in the flat woods;” still glibly knitting, she jerked her head toward the western world outside the limits of the great ranges. “Whenst I war a gal I war acquainted with a woman what pizened her husband, an’ they kep’ her in jail a consider’ble time—a senseless thing ter do ter jail her, ter my mind, fur he war a shif’less no-’count fool, an’ nobody but her would hev put up with him ez long ez she did. The jedge an’ jury thunk the same, fur they ‘lowed ez she war crazy—an’ so she war, ter hev ever married him! They turned her loose, but she never got another husband—I never knowed a man-person but what was skittish ‘bout any unhealthy meddlin’ with his vittles.”
She paused to count the stitches on her needles, the big shadow of her cap-ruffles bobbing on the daubed and chinked log walls in antic mimicry, while down Ethelinda’s pink cheeks the slow tears coursed at the prospect of such immurement.
“Jes’ kase I showed a stranger his path——”