"Sometimes I think everybody's like a feather in the wind," replied she. "About love—and everything."
He laughed. "Except those people who are where there isn't any wind."
CHAPTER XII
FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well in toward the Kentucky shore, to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton. A few yards below its mouth, in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the wharf-boat, little more than a landing stage. The hotel was but a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep levee. It was midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep. After several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in drawing to the door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge, knotted hand—a man of great stature, amazingly lean and long of leg, with a monstrous head thatched and fronted with coarse, yellow-brown hair. He had on a dirty cotton shirt and dirty cotton trousers—a night dress that served equally well for the day. His feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns and bunions. Susan had early been made a critical observer of feet by the unusual symmetry of her own. She had seen few feet that were fit to be seen; but never, she thought, had she seen an exhibition so repellent.
"What t'hell——" he began. Then, discovering Susan, he growled,
"Beg pardon, miss."
Roderick explained—that is, told the prearranged story. The man pointed to a grimy register on the office desk, and Roderick set down the fishing bag and wrote in a cramped, scrawly hand, "Kate Peters, Milton, Ky."
The man looked at it through his screen of hair and beard, said,
"Come on, ma'am."
"Just a minute," said Roderick, and he drew "Kate" aside and said to her in a low tone: "I'll be back sometime tomorrow, and then we'll start at once. But—to provide against everything—don't be alarmed if I don't come. You'll know I couldn't help it. And wait."
Susan nodded, looking at him with trustful, grateful eyes.
"And," he went on hurriedly, "I'll leave this with you, to take care of. It's yours as much as mine."