“Who is he?”
Ezra looked back at the doors and windows and moved nearer to Archibald.
“It’s Mike O’Neill,” he whispered.
The name meant nothing to Archibald and his face showed it.
“The kid’s father,” Ezra explained.
“Pegeen’s father?” The man’s tone was amazed, unbelieving, protesting; but Ezra nodded his head.
“Uh huh. He’s been hanging around ever since spring. Crazy as a loon. Stayed in that old woodchopper’s hut on Bald Pate, daytimes, and went skulking around nights, stealing enough to live on and burning a barn now and then just for fun.”
“You’re sure?” Archibald’s heart cried out against the hideous thing. Peg’s father the barn burner, the petty thief, the miserable, sodden wreck that lay there on the dirty bed! It was unthinkable and yet Ezra’s voice and manner carried conviction.
“Oh, yes. I’m sure,” he was saying. “I’ve known ever since the Shaker fire. I’d suspicioned there was somebody around that nobody knew about; and one night I’d run into a man when I happened to be coming out of Miss Moran’s chicken house; but I didn’t see him rightly. I was sort of busy not being seen myself. Then, the night the Shaker barn burned, I caught him running away down the road just after the fire broke out. I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him. ’Twus bright moonlight, you know. He ducked into the woods; but I trailed him up Bald Pate and then I come home and figgered things out. ’Twus plain as the nose on yer face that he’d been doing the barn burning; and, first off, I thought I’d tell folks and sort of clear things up for myself. But then I got to thinking about the kid and how bad she’d feel and there wuzn’t anybody to be upset be-cuz I was a fire-bug and I didn’t give a damn what folks believed about me; so I just decided to keep things to myself. I went up and called turkey to O’Neill, though—told the crazy fool that I knew all about what he’d been doing and that I could have him hanged but that I wouldn’t if he’d let up on the barn business. I didn’t care how much he stole. He seemed to sense what I meant and blubbered around and said he wouldn’t light any more fires, only they looked so pretty when they burned and St. Michael had told him to come back here and burn all the barns, and Michael was his special saint so he didn’t want to contrary him. I told him I’d fix it up with Michael and then he quieted down and I come away. Looked as if he wasn’t too batty to keep a promise, until last night. Then Tibbits’ barn went up; and, as I wuz sneaking along through the woods so as nobody’d see me and think I’d been out doing the burning, I stumbled over this here bundle of rags. Just the way he is now, he wuz. I had a time getting him down here and then I didn’t know what to do next; but I figgered I’d better go and git you, in the morning.”
It was a long speech for Ezra. Never, to his own knowledge, had he strung so many words together at one time; and he stumbled through the story with a hang-dog air as though mortally ashamed to shift his vicious reputation to other shoulders.