“They aint half as sick as they make out an' I've come to see about it,” he added. He felt the child's pulse. “She ain't sick to hurt. That spinner is idle over yonder an' I guess I'll jes' be carryin' her back. Wuck—it's the greatest tonic in the worl'—it's the Hostetter's Bitters of life,” he added, trying to be funny.
The Bishop looked up. “Yes, but I've knowed men to get so drunk on bitters they didn't kno' a mill-dam from a dam'-mill!”
Carpenter smiled: “Wal, she ain't hurt—guess I'll jes' git her cloze on an' take her over”—still feeling the child's wrist while she shuddered and hid under the cover. Nothing but her arm was out, and from the nervous grip of her little claw-like fingers the old man could only guess her terrible fear.
“You sho'ly don't mean that, Jud Carpenter?” said the Bishop, with surprise in his heretofore calm tone.
“Wal, that's jus' what I do mean, Doctor,” remarked Carpenter dryly, and in an irritated voice.
“Jud Carpenter,” said the old man rising—“I am a man of God—it is my faith an' hope. I'm gettin' old, but I have been a man in my day, an' I've still got strength enough left with God's he'p to stop you. You shan't tech that child.”
In an instant Carpenter was ablaze—profane, abusive, insolent—and as the old man stepped between him and the bed, the Whipper-in's anger overcame all else.
The child under the cover heard a resounding whack and stuck her head out in time to see the hot blood leap to the old man's cheeks where Carpenter's blow had fallen. For a moment he paused, and then the child saw the old overseer's huge fist gripping spasmodically, and the big muscles of his arms and shoulders rolling beneath the folds of his coat, as a crouching lion's skin rolls around beneath his mane before he springs.
Again and again it gripped, and relaxed—gripped and relaxed again. Mastering himself with a great effort, the old man turned to the man who had slapped him.
“Strike the other cheek, you coward, as my Master sed you would.”