"No sech fool ez ter use it, ef ye did," she sneered. "Ye know ye'd only make matters worse."
"Then I mought meet some o' that man's kin," he suggested.
"Air you uns layin' fur 'em?" she asked, "an' they don't even live in the county."
"Naw—naw," he muttered, at a loss for a subterfuge.
"What did ye kem hyar fur, in them scarecrow clothes?" she gazed contemptuously at him, her disgust for their unkempt condition, their rags, their dirt, which was suggested rather than seen, delineated in high disdain in every feature of her face.
He was pitiably conscious of his unpicturesque plight, and yet he had been proud of the completeness and efficiency of his disguise.
"You uns know I couldn't come lookin' like myself, Clotildy, though I'd mighty nigh ruther be drowned 'n let you see me 'pear so—so—common."
His humility might have been expected to disarm her.
"You kem hyar never expectin' me ter view you uns," she said sternly. "I 'member yer words an' how secret ye looked whenst ye said 'em. Ye kem hyar ter spy on me an' him—an' ef ye 'lowed I liked him most, ye'd draw that shootin' iron out yer boot that ye loaded a-purpose. That's what ye kem hyar fur, lookin' like the scum o' the yearth—ez ye air."
He flushed to the roots of his hair, shame for his poor habiliments so mastered him. He felt all in fault that he had revealed himself. He had not that control of his faculties, the possession of the situation, the normal ascendency of the man's mind over the woman's that he would have grasped under any other circumstances. He had only acquainted her with the dangerous secret of his presence here; with his jealousy, and his fell determination of revenge for the heart reft from him; with the fact that he went armed in search of the sweet opportunities of vengeance; with the identity of the malefactor in the event of a deed of violence, of some mystery of disaster. And for what? To receive her faint-hearted denials of her fickle faith; to be rated and upbraided as never before had he heard her—heard any of the submissive mountain women—lift her voice in arraignment of a man's deeds; to have her deliberately take back her promise, or as an alternative dictate terms; he felt that some hard compact was in contemplation. Yet this was his only resource to retrieve his mistake in revealing his identity, and if her terms did not suit him he too could keep or break a bargain. Nevertheless he did not dream of the condition when he said: