"I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat bent on business or pleasure, passed now and then; all else was still and seemingly asleep.
Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around.
Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him shrink and suffer.
"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some." Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief.
Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston himself for marksmanship. "Him and her—who?" he asked, raising his dull eyes to Billy's tormenting face.
"Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his shack; I listened outside the winder once—he reads to her and tells her things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss her."
Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling.
Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain and heart.
He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow—then he looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected houses—nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen happenings were going on—he must understand.
"You saw—him—kiss—her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees.