This list of enemies was indeed so full that there were times when I felt like crying over my isolation. It may be guessed, then, how rejoiced I was one afternoon to see Ni Hagadorn squeeze his way through our orchard-bars, and saunter across under the trees to where I was at work sorting a heap of apples into barrels. I could have run to meet him, so grateful was the sight of any friendly, boyish face. The thought that perhaps after all he had not come to see me in particular, and that possibly he brought some news about Jeff, only flashed across my mind after I had smiled a broad welcome upon him, and he stood leaning against a barrel munching the biggest russet he had been able to pick out.
“Abner to home?” he asked, after a pause of neighborly silence. He hadn't come to see me after all.
“He's around the barns somewhere,” I replied; adding, upon reflection, “Have you heard something fresh?”
Ni shook his sorrel head, and buried his teeth deep into the apple. “No, nothin',” he said, at last, with his mouth full, “only thought I'd come up an' talk it over with Abner.”
The calm audacity of the proposition took my breath away. “He'll boot you off'm the place if you try it,” I warned him.
But Ni did not scare easily. “Oh, no,” he said, with light confidence, “me an' Abner's all right.”
As if to put this assurance to the test, the figure of the farmer was at this moment visible, coming toward us down the orchard road. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with the limp, discolored old broad-brimmed felt hat he always wore pulled down over his eyes. Though he no longer held his head so proudly erect as I could remember it, there were still suggestions of great force and mastership in his broad shoulders and big beard, and in the solid, long-gaited manner of his walk. He carried a pitchfork in his hand.
“Hello, Abner?” said Ni, as the farmer came up and halted, surveying each of us in turn with an impassive scrutiny.
“How 'r' ye!” returned Abner, with cold civility. I fancied he must be surprised to see the son of his enemy here, calmly gnawing his way through one of our apples, and acting as if the place belonged to him. But he gave no signs of astonishment, and after some words of direction to me concerning my work, started to move on again toward the barns.
Ni was not disposed to be thus cheated out of his conversation: “Seen Warner Pitts since he's got back?” he called out, and at this the farmer stopped and turned round. “You'd hardly know him now,” the butcher's assistant went on, with cheerful briskness. “Why you'd think he'd never hoofed it over ploughed land in all his life. He's got his boots blacked up every day, an' his hair greased, an' a whole new suit of broadcloth, with shoulder-straps an' brass buttons, an' a sword—he brings it down to the Corners every evening, so't the boys at the store can heft it—an' he's—”