“I do that,” she would always respond, very much as Biddy McGuire, the Irish washwoman, might have said it.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GOOD SAMARITAN PAYS
The winter wore away, spring came and quickly melted into summer; the first anniversary of the unexplained disappearance of Oliver Baxter passed. Three months remained of the last year allotted to Oliver October by the gypsy “queen” on that wild, shrieking night in ’ninety. He was still alive and thriving, and the shadow of the scaffold was as invisible as on the day the prophecy was uttered.
But by this time practically everybody in Rumley was counting the days and jokingly reminding Oliver that his chances got better every day!
He grinned and suggested that the town ought to put up a stupendous calendar in front of the city hall and check off each succeeding day, so that the public could keep count with the least possible tax on the mind.
“I feel like a freak in a dime museum,” he said to Jane one evening. “What you ought to do at the lawn fête next week, Jane, is to put me in a little tent and charge ten cents admission to see the man that the hangman is after. You’d raise enough money to wipe out the entire church debt. Think it over.”
He had just returned from a hurried trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where an old man was being held—a queer old tramp with a prodigious Adam’s apple, who refused to give any account of himself. This was but one of the fruitless journeys he had taken during the twelve-month.
“I see by the paper this evening that your Uncle Horace has announced himself as a candidate for State senator,” said Mr. Sage, who was enjoying his customary half-hour on the porch with them.
“Well, I know one vote he will not get,” said Oliver, “even if he is my uncle.”