"Now if Dave Sovine comes after you for that hundred dollars, you'd better put him off, as easy as you can. If we should buy him off we wouldn't want to give the prosecution time to fetch him back."
Bob thought he saw a twinkle in Lincoln's eye as he said this; a something in his expression that indicated more than he said. But though he looked at the lawyer curiously, he got no further light. That evening, as Bob passed the Grayson farm-house, he told the anxious Barbara something about it, and added: "Abe Lincoln's powerful deep. He's got sumpin ur nuther in 'is head 't I can't noways see into. I don't half believe 't 'e means to buy up that low-lived scoundrel arter all. He acts like a man that's got a deadfall all sot, un is a-tryin' to honey-fugle the varmint to git 'im to come underneath."
And Barbara took what comfort she could out of this assurance.
XXI
HIRAM AND BARBARA
To Barbara, indeed, the unrelieved apprehension and suspense of those long, hot August days were almost intolerable. The frequent excursions to the Moscow jail, to carry some tidbits of home cookery, or some article for Tom's personal comfort, afforded a practical outlet to feeling and a relief from the monotony of passive suffering, but these journeys also brought sharp trials of their own to Barbara's courage and self-control. She might not betray to Tom or to her mother how much she suffered; it was for her to support both the one and the other.
Doubtless it would have been a relief could she have told Hiram Mason all the dreadful apprehensions that haunted her during the long, sleepless nights. But from the hour of Mason's entering the house he had avoided confidential relations with Barbara. Before and after school Hiram attended to all those small cares that about a farm-house usually fall to the lot of a man. Gentle and considerate to Mrs. Grayson and Barbara, he preserved toward the latter a careful reserve. He could not resume the subject discussed the evening they had peeled apples by the loom; it seemed out of the question that he should talk to Barbara of such things while her mind was engrossed with the curse of Cain impending upon her brother. He might have sought to renew the matter under cover of giving her a closer sympathy and a more cordial support in her sorrows, but he saw in her demureness only the same sensitive pride that had shrunk from his advances; and he knew that this pride had been wounded to the quick by the family disgrace. Moreover, to urge his claims as a lover at such a time would cover all his services to the family with a verdigris of self-interest; and he thought that such advances would add to Barbara's distress. In making them he would be taking an unfair advantage of the obligations she might feel herself under to him, and the more he thought of it the more he abhorred to put himself in such an attitude. So he daily strengthened his resolution to be nothing but Mrs. Grayson's next friend while he remained under her roof, and to postpone all the rest until this ordeal should be past.
In many ways he was able to be helpful to the two troubled women. He stood between them and the prying curiosity of strangers, answering all questions about the family, about Tom, and about the case. He was their messenger on many occasions, and he went with them every Saturday or Sunday to Moscow. But at other times Barbara saw little of him except at the table, and he avoided all conspicuous attentions to her. Even Mely McCord, though often at the house, could find no subject for chaff in the relations of the two. When the matter was under discussion among the young gossips at the Timber Creek school-house, Mely declared she "did n' 'low they wuz anything in the talk about the master un Barbary,—he did n' pay Barbary no 'tention 't all, now 't 'e 'd got every chance." If Mason had been a person of less habitual self-repression he would not have been able to house his feelings so securely; but this man came of an austere stock; self-control was with him not merely habitual, it was hereditary.
Hiram had besides a battle of his own to fight. The Monday morning after the killing of Lockwood, as he went to the school-house, he was met in the road by Lysander Butts, next neighbor to the Graysons—a square-built man with a cannon-ball head. Butts was from the hill country of New Jersey, a man of narrow prejudices and great obstinacy.