“You’ll have to drive Mr. Lockwood back to where I found him, Jackson,” she said. “You can pick up Mr. Hanna as you come back.”
“Oh Lordy, sis!” Jackson exclaimed. “You ain’t gone and made Mr. Hanna walk all that ways round to the bridge?”
He laughed, and yet looked uneasy. If Hanna had offered his sister any insult, he would have to be shown the door, or perhaps thrashed, or perhaps shot. But Louise laughed easily.
“He preferred to come that way,” she said, and Jackson looked relieved.
“Sure I’ll drive you back,” he said to Lockwood. “But you ain’t in no such hurry, surely. Say, why can’t you stop and eat supper with us?”
Lockwood pleaded his duty and his horse left in the woods. He was not yet prepared to meet Hanna, to sit at table with him. But he felt a conviction that he would have to face it sooner or later.
CHAPTER VI
THE MEETING
Lockwood rode his rounds the next day with a queer feeling of change. It had been coming on for days, that feeling—in fact, ever since the night when he had watched that magical moonlight on the white front of the colonial house; and it had culminated in the meeting of yesterday. Memory came back to him slowly and in scraps. He certainly recollected Louise in New Orleans. He remembered having spoken to her casually as she passed him; he had once had some dealing or other with her in the office; but he could not remember a single word she had ever said to him. Evidently, however, she had remembered him, and the thought brought a stir of warmth to his blood.
He wondered anxiously what Hanna’s relations with the girl might be. It made him furious to think that he should have any relations at all. But what, indeed, were Hanna’s relations with the whole family?
In a broad way, Lockwood thought he could answer that. It was undoubtedly a confidence game that was being worked. Hanna was winning the money at cards, perhaps, or appropriating it in some even more crafty manner. Lockwood chuckled rather grimly as he thought how opportunely he had arrived. It would put a fine edge on his vengeance to spoil Hanna’s game before killing him.