“You milked her?” he asked.
“Yes; but you measured the milk,” said Mordecai.
“So I did,” said the drover in an absent tone in which was the usual false note, “so I did. I remember now. But you used to milk her.”
“Yes,” faltered the boy, feeling that the heavens were likely to fall or the earth to cave in.
The story at the next inn, near Pittsfield, on the Albany way, outdid all the rest. A man who had robbed his neighbors by deception, after this story, had been followed nights by the clanking of an invisible chain. A neighbor whom he had ruined died, and after that the clankings of the “invisible chain” began to be heard in his bedchamber. If he ran down-stairs they followed him, clank, clank, clank, on the oak steps, and out into the garden.
Mordecai could fancy it all: the man running half-crazed down the oak stairs, with the invisible chain clanking behind him.
When the drover next tried to sell that cow he declared that she had given “eighteen quarts of milk a day,” to which he called Mordecai to witness. The boy gasped “Yes” to the question if he had milked her regularly, but he seemed to hear the clanking of the invisible chain as he acted his part for the last time. The wonderful cow was sold.
In this state of mind Mordecai came to the Plainfield Inn, and again met there the serene and truthful Aunt Eunice.
“I’ve kept my promise that I made to thee a year ago,” said the sympathetic woman, “gallows and all. The dyestuff took, and the colors of the comforter are real pretty. Thee looks troubled.”