He bent over the form she showed him.
"It's Stires," he said with a chuckle. "I heard he'd come back." The chuckle turned to a cough, and he shook his head. "This is sad! You could never believe how I have labored with the boy, but"—he turned out his hands—"you see, there is the temptation. It is his unhappy weakness."
Jessica remembered the yellow, smirking face now. She had passed him on the day Tom Felder had walked with her from the Mountain Valley House, and the lawyer had told her he lived in the cabin just below the Knob, where she so often sat. She felt a quiver of repulsion.
"He is not intoxicated," she said coldly. "He is ill. You know him, then?"
"Know him!" he echoed, and laughed—a dry, cackling laugh. "I ought to. And I guess he knows me." He shook the inert arm. "Get up, Hugh!" he said. "It's Prendergast!"
There flashed through her mind the phrase of the surly hotel-keeper: "His side-partner, Prendergast!" Could it be? Had Hugh really lived in the cabin on which she had so often peered down during those past weeks? And with this chosen crony!
She touched Prendergast's arm. "He is ill, I say," she repeated. "He must be cared for at once. Your cabin is on the hillside, isn't it?"
"His cabin," he corrected. "A rough place, but it has sheltered us both. I am but guide, philosopher and friend."
She bit her lips. "Lift him on my horse," she said. She stooped and put her hands under the twitching shoulders. "I will help you. I am quite strong."