The guest acted as though he had a mind not to reply, but at last said he was the only passenger for Davy's Bend.
"I was expecting more of my wife's kin," Tug said, with an angry snort, taking down his finger to turn over the meat-bone, and using his eye to look for a place not yet attacked. "Come to think about it, though, they are not likely to arrive by rail; they will probably reach town on foot, in the morning. They are too poor to ride. I wish they were too sick to walk, damn them. Do you happen to know what the word ornery means?"
The guest acted as though he had a mind not to reply again, but finally shook his head, after some hesitation.
"Well," the ugly fellow said, "if you stay here,—which I don't believe you will, for you look too much like a good one to remain here long,—I'll introduce you not only to the word but to the kin. After you have seen my wife's relations, you'll fight when anybody calls you ornery."
Finding a likely spot on the meat-bone at the conclusion of this speech, Mr. Whittle went on with his eating, and was silent.
"There are a great many people who do not like Tug's looks," the clerk went on to say, without noticing the interruption, and looking admiringly at that individual, as though he could not understand why he was not more generally admired; "so it is not surprising that you are suspicious of him. I do not say it with reference to you, for you do not know him; but my opinion is that the people dislike him because of his mind. He knows too much to suit them, and they hate him."
By this time Tug had wiped up everything before him, and after transferring the grease and pie crumbs from his lips and beard to his sleeve, the three men were silent, listening to the rain on the outside, and taking turns in looking out of the windows into the darkness.
"I suppose the shutters are rattling dismally up at The Locks to-night," Silas Davy said. "And the windows! Lord, how the windows must rattle! I've been told that when there isn't a breath of air the shutters and windows at The Locks go on at a great rate, and they must be at it to-night, for I have never known it to be so oppressive and still before."
"And the light," Tug suggested, removing his aim from the stranger a moment, and directing it toward Davy.
"Yes, the light, of course," Davy assented. "They say—I don't know who says it in particular, but everybody says it in general—that on a night like this a light appears in the lower rooms, where it disappears and is seen in the front hall; then in the upper hall, and then in an upper room, where it goes out finally, as if someone had been sitting down-stairs, in the dark, and had struck a light to show him up to bed. There is no key to the room where the light disappears, and those who visit the house are not permitted to enter it. I have never seen the light myself, but I have been to the house on windy, noisy days, and it was as silent on the inside as a tomb. The windows and shutters being noisy on quiet nights, I suppose they feel the need of a rest when the wind is blowing."