Turning away, he recrossed the log, and stood for a moment, hesitating, with his hand on the gate. A decrepit figure, hobbling with bent head through a golden cloud of dust, signed to him to stop, and while he waited, he made out the person of old Adam, slightly the worse, he gathered, for the wedding feast.
"I tarried thar till the last, hopin' to have still another taste of toddy," remarked the aged merrymaker. "When a man has turned ninety he might as well cease to take thought for his morals, an' let the natchel bent of 'em have a chance."
It was plain that his last glass had been too much for him, and that, for the first time in his temperate career, he was rapidly approaching a condition of alcoholic ecstasy.
"You'd better go home and take a nap," said Abel kindly. "You can't very well get lost between here and your house, or I'd go with you."
"It warn't the weddin' glass that was too much for me," replied the old man at the point of tears, "'twas the one I had arterwards at the or'nary. Not wishin' to depart from an old custom on account of a rare festival, I stopped at Mrs. Bottom's just as young Mr. Jonathan an' Reuben Merryweather's gal drove up from Applegate. Ah, sech a sight as she was—all in shot silk that rustled when you looked at it—an' as pretty as a pictur."
"So they've come back?" asked Abel, almost in a whisper.
"Yes, they've come back, an' a sad comin' it was for her, as I could see in her face. 'What are you wearin' yo' Sunday best for, Mr. Doolittle?' asked Mr. Jonathan, spry as a cricket. 'It's a fine weddin' I've been to, Mr. Jonathan,' I answered, 'an' I've seen two lovin' hearts beatin' as one befo' Mr. Mullen at the altar.' Then Reuben Merryweather's gal called out right quickly, 'Whose weddin', old Adam?' an' when I replied, 'Abel Revercomb's,' as I was bound to, her face went as white as a han't right thar befo' me—-"
"You'd better go home or you won't be in any condition to walk there," said Abel angrily. "It's down right indecent to see a man of your age rocking about in the road."
Turning quickly in his tracks, he went over the log again and on to the loneliness of the meadows beyond.
"And she went as white as a haunt," he muttered under his breath.