"The sher'ff hain't got no call ter meddle with moonshine," Shadrach Pinnott was forced to resume at length. "But ef he war ter hev reason ter s'arch my outfit fur law-breakers agin the State he'd find the liquor an' word would be tuk ter the marshal."
Eugene had his own sullen grievances. He was still a free agent, but at that moment no vague intention of sharing the moonshiners' venture into Colbury had entered his mind. To him it seemed like putting his head into the lion's jaws. He had nevertheless winced from the perception of their carelessness as to his safety, when he had remonstrated against the risks of the expedition which might rebound upon him, and almost equally from their wanton taunts. Now he was indisposed to reassure them in their turn, to set their minds at rest as to the dangers which his presence in Colbury might bring down on them. He said naught, and for the nonce Shadrach Pinnott was at a loss.
By some filial intuition Clotilda divined the emergency, for she was hardly so versed in the exigencies of the hazardous law-breaking vocation as to appreciate it of her own initiative.
"I dunno whut you uns mean by sayin' ye would see me at the show," she said in a low voice. "Jes' now ye war tryin' ter torment me by talkin' 'bout being hid out like a wolf or su'thin' wild."
A casual conversation was in progress amongst the group beside the furnace. Binley lowered his voice to the key of her own. "Do that torment you uns, Honey-sweet?" he asked, lured anew.
She silently cast a glance of reproach at him. Her face was so beautiful with this expression of upbraiding protest—it needed but this touch of sentiment to lift it into the grade of the truly exquisite. He should have been touched by the embellishment which a thought of grief for him had wrought upon it. But he remembered in that moment the stranger's admiration. Doubtless as she looked at him she was conscious of its charm; she gauged its power upon his poor unstable melting heart. All the fascination of her youthful loveliness was no longer a sealed book to her. She had been apprised of its worth even for a public performance. She was now exerting it consciously to make and keep him subject, not to her whim alone, but to bend him to the iron rule of the crafty Shadrach. Eugene Binley loved her after his fashion, but it was not that high, sacrificial passion that annuls self, and fosters faith, and blinds sober reason. If, as he suspected, she loved him no longer; if so soon, so lightly he was supplanted in her heart; if no more his great and troublous trials absorbed her pity and her sympathy, the consciousness would work a metamorphosis in his sentiment. His tenderness would be replaced by revenge; his admiration would resolve itself into contumely; his mistaken faith would evolve deceit. Already on the mere suspicion he was meeting craft with craft. Her upbraiding eyes encountered a look as languishingly adoring as if no divination of her motive informed it, as if this restive, alert, exacting creature were wholly and hopelessly her own. "I 'lowed I'd see you uns—I never said nuthin' ez I knows on 'bout you uns seein' me."
He pushed his hat back on his long, chestnut hair and looked down at her with his large brown eyes luminously watchful as if to minutely descry the effect of his words.
The fascination of the new vista opening in her restricted life, so wide, so long, so variously flowered to one who knew naught heretofore but the wood-pile and the cow pen and the treadle of the loom, filled her every faculty. She longed to be still, to think; she could scarcely affect interest in the distinction he made in his speech—that he should see her but she should not see him—she was eager to have the preparations for the sortie to the cove fairly under way. Nevertheless with the realisation of furthering the moonshiner's plans she kept the wily fish in play.
"What be you uns talkin' 'bout? I reckon I could see you uns ef ye could see me?" she asked, pulling at the strings of dark red beads falling down over the bosom of her light blue cotton gown.
As he shook his head to and fro smiling enigmatically she was so weary of him and his mysteries that the listlessness of her effort at interest could not be kept from her face, and might in itself have intimated her state of mind had he not already suspected it. She bent her face downward as if to escape too close a scrutiny while still, fixedly smiling, he studied its contour.