"But 't war self-defence," the harassed creature cried out in a harsh, strained voice. He had made this plea often enough at the bar of conscience—his flight had precluded his arraignment at the bar of justice. "'T war self-defence—the world knows it, and the law allows it."
"Then why n't ye leave it ter men, Eujeemes?" Tom's strong back was still bent under the keg of singlings, and his face was still maliciously a-grin. Shadrach could not so easily call off his pack.
This problem of "leaving it to men," the rural synonym of a court of justice, had tortured the hunted fugitive day and night. With the limited mental development of a backwoodsman and the lack of urban or worldly experience he could not measure the unseen forces to which he might consign his fate and thus he resolved and then shrank back, and ventured forth to again run precipitately to cover. What the lawyers could prove and what they could not; how much their own codes constrained them and what they stretched here and let fall slack there; what powers the judge possessed; how grim was the jail; how fell and rancorous were the officers of the constabulary—he could not decide. And thus he lurked here innocent of the crime of which he dreaded to be accused, and by his lurking he became inculpated with the illicit distillery. Now he was doubly amenable to arrest—to escape on one score would convict him on another, and the suggestion that he should leave aught to men had become a nettling taunt. As he remained silent Ben flung at him in antistrophe—"Ef he be so willin' ter leave it ter men why do he shelter hyar with we uns?"
Once more Shadrach sought to interfere, beginning in an unctuous soothing voice—"Stop, boys, stop, boys," when suddenly Clotilda stepped forward into the white lustre of the sparkling walls and the glimmer of the tallow dip. Her presence ended logic. "Why, thar's daddy's leetle gal! How do, Baby. Been singin' an' chirpin' with the stranger man like a grasshopper in August weather."
Clotilda received this simile with a shrug of disdain. She had begun to think exceedingly well of her gifts of singing and dancing and scarcely cared that they should be so lightly and jocosely mentioned. Vanity of all the human traits is the most easily cultivated, and when Eugene Binley, gathering his composure, asked if she were going to Colbury, too, with the others, she replied with a duplicate of the shrug—"Why, 'course I be. They air all goin' jes' on account o' Me."
CHAPTER IV
An extreme surprise at the good fortune of another is an ungrateful sentiment and must needs be warily expressed. It tends to the suggestion that the reward exceeds the merits in the case, and Eugene Binley by no means commended himself by the astonishment with which he now heard for the first time the extraordinary fact, which Clotilda detailed to him, that her singing and dancing had so entranced the town-man that he had besought the Pinnott family to come to the Street Fair without money and without price, and that there she was to sing and dance for all the crowd to wonder at her gifts and grace.
"That ain't whut the Pinnott men-folks air goin' fur," he said bluntly; "they air goin' ter sell whisky in that thar dry town." And he pointed over his shoulder at a load of splint baskets which several were bringing out of a remote recess, and which were always unused and fresh, kept as a light disguise for a waggon otherwise laden. "It's mighty dangerous," he added. But she made no comment. Presumably she thought the men were able to take care of themselves.
He hesitated for a moment, then recurred to the subject important to none but himself and her.
"Singin' with the stranger-man! I wondered why you uns war so long a-comin' down."