How gay the place had been the night of the ball, with the lights and roses and music! He remembered what the doctor had said about Valiant and Shirley—it had lain ever since in his mind, a painful speculation. The recollection roused another thought from which he shrank. He stirred uneasily. What on earth kept that old darky so long over that julep?
A slight noise made him turn his head. But nothing moved. Only a creak of the woodwork, he thought, and settled back again in his chair.
It was, in fact, a stealthy footfall he had heard. It came from the library, where a shabby figure crouched, listening, in the corner behind the tapestried screen—a man evilly clad, with a scarred cheek.
It had been with no good purpose that Greef King had dogged the major these last days. He hugged a hot hatred grown to white heat in six years of prison labor within bleak walls at the clicking shoe-machine, or with the chain-gang on blazing or frosty turnpikes. He had slunk behind him that afternoon, creeping up the drive under cover of the bushes, and while the other talked with Uncle Jefferson, had skirted the house and entered from the farther side, through an open French window. Now as he peered from behind the screen, a poker, snatched from the fireplace, was in his hand. His furtive gaze fell upon a morocco-covered case on a commode by his side. He lifted its lid and his eyes narrowed as he saw that it held a pistol. He set down the poker noiselessly and took the weapon. He tilted it—it was rusted, but there were loads in the chambers. He crouched lower, with a whispered curse: the major was coming into the library, but not alone—the old nigger was with him!
Uncle Jefferson bore a tray with a frosted goblet over whose rim peeped green leaves and which spread abroad an ambrosial odor, which the major sniffed approvingly as the other set the burden on the desk at his elbow.
“Majah,” said the latter solemnly, “you reck’n Mars’ John en Miss Shirley—”
“Good lord!” said the major, wheeling to the small ormolu clock on the desk. “It’s ’most four o’clock. Haven’t you any idea where he’s gone?”
“No, suh, less’n he’s gwineter look ovah dem walnut trees. Whut Ah’s gwine ter say—yo’ reck’n Mars’ John en Miss—”
“Walnut trees? Is he going to sell them?”