“Bless gresshus! but dat wuz hot!” he exclaimed, blowing upon his fingers. And then: “Des you keep yo’ eye on dat dollah, ef you please, suh, twell I come back, an’ I’ll fix ’im,” and a little later he returned from the cook-house with a small tin pan which he turned down over the piece of money.
“Ef dat won’t be in you gemmans’ way, an’ you-all ’ll des leab ’im dah, I gwine come back bimeby an’ tek de cunjer off ’im. I ain’ gwine lef de ol’ debbil hab dat dollah, not ef it is his’n.”
The little diversion did for Tregarvon what Carfax had hoped it might; and after the belated meal was eaten and the pipes were lighted, the atmosphere of disheartenment was changed somewhat for the better.
“There is one thing we have to be thankful for,” the disappointed one volunteered, when his reflections began to mellow in the tobacco smoke. “We haven’t heard from the enemy since the attempt was made to ditch the car, and there haven’t been any more of the unaccountable accidents to the machinery.”
“That is so,” said Carfax. “And I have been trying to guess, all along, why he—or they—stopped so abruptly.”
“There wasn’t any good reason why he—or they—should have begun,” said Tregarvon musingly.
“Somebody evidently thought there was a reason, and afterward changed his mind. Why should he change his mind? That is the question that has been puzzling me.”
“Perhaps he has found out what a good fellow I really am, and is no longer bloodthirsty,” put in Tregarvon, who was too tired to make any very heavy drafts upon his mentality.
“You haven’t any notion that the fight, if there is one, is personal to you, have you?—excluding Professor Hartridge, of course.”
“Oh, no; I was only joking. And we’ll always exclude Hartridge, if you please; I’m still refusing to believe it of him. It was probably somebody’s intention to drown the blind kitten of an Ocoee before it had time to get its eyes open; but the somebody couldn’t, by any stretch of imagination, be Hartridge.”