"I'm with the crowd, though, when it comes to my wife's kin," he said, eyeing his host in an impudent way. "A good many don't say so; but it makes them all hot to fill their houses with their relations. Whenever you go to see your relations, depend upon it that they are glad when you are gone. They may pretend to like you, but they don't, except when you are away from them. But in all other respects I'm common. Common! I'm so common that I like boiled cabbage; and the olives you blow about—I'd as soon eat green pignuts soaked in brine. Common!" He yelled out the words as though he were calling some one of that name in the cellar. "If men were judged by their commonness, I would be a chief with plumes in my hat."
Allan Dorris and Silas Davy were seated with their backs to the windows overlooking the town, while Tug sat opposite them, and in transferring his gaze from one to the other, in dignified preparation for resuming his conversation, which both his companions were enjoying, he saw the mysterious face he had seen once before peering into the room, and which was hastily withdrawn.
Tug jumped up from his chair at sight of it, and hurried to the window with such haste that the table was almost upset; but the face, as well as the figure to which it belonged, had disappeared. Throwing up the sash, Tug found that he could step out on to a porch, and from this he dropped into the yard with a great crash through the vines and lattice-work. Silas Davy quickly followed, by way of the stairs, suspecting the cause of Tug's disappearance; and Dorris was left alone.
All this had occupied but a few moments, and he probably thought of the circumstance as one of the many eccentricities of the two odd men; for after pulling down the lever to close the gate (it is a wonder that he was not surprised to find it open) he sat down before the fire and engaged in the pleasant thoughts that were interrupted early in the evening.
Silas did not come up with Tug until he reached the vicinity of the hotel, where a single street lamp burned all night, and while they were hurrying along without speaking, the figure they were pursuing passed quickly on the opposite side of the street from the hotel. The rays of the lamp were so feeble that the figure was only a shadow; but they easily recognized it as the one seen before—that of a man above the medium height, enveloped in a long cloak, not unlike those worn by women in wet weather, with a slouch hat pulled down over his face.
The two men hurried after it, but in the darkness they were frequently compelled to stop and listen for the footsteps of the pursued, in order to detect his course. Each time the echoes were more indistinct, for the fellow was making good use of his legs; and in this manner they traced his course to the river bank, near the ferry landing, where the ferry-boat itself was tied up for the night. They concluded that the fugitive had a skiff tied there somewhere, which he intended to use in leaving the place, and, hurrying on board the ferry-boat, they rapped loudly at the door of the little room on the upper deck where the crew usually slept, with a view of procuring means of following.
The fellow who had charge of the ferry, a native of the low lands lying along the river, was known as "Young Bill Young," although he greatly desired that the people call him "Old Captain Young;" therefore both men pounded vigorously on the door, and loudly called "Captain Young," as a tribute to his vanity. "Captain Young" soon appeared, for he always slept in a bunk with his clothes on, which he said reminded him of his sea days, although he had never really seen any other water than that on which he operated his ferry. As the two hurriedly explained to him that they wanted a boat, Young Bill Young went to the lower deck, and unlocked one that floated at the stern, and soon Tug and his friend were pulling down the river with long strokes, for there were two pairs of oars. Occasionally they stopped rowing to listen, but nothing could be heard save the gentle ripple of the current; whereupon they worked with greater vigor than before.
They had rowed in this manner for an hour or more, when, stopping to listen again, the plash of oars was indistinctly heard on the water ahead of them. Lying down in the prow of the boat, Tug could see the boat and its occupants low down on the water, between him and the first rays of light of the coming morning. There was a heavy fog on the river, which was lying close to the water, but this had lifted sufficiently to permit an inspection through the rising mist. There were two figures in the boat; one rowing, who was evidently the man they had twice seen looking in at them, and the other a much smaller person, who was seated in the stern, and steering. This fact Tug regarded as so remarkable that he told Davy to lie down, and take a look, and when Davy returned to his oars, after a long inspection, he said:—
"I make out two."