A WEARY WINTER[29]
[From The Truth About the Trouble at Roundstone (Boston, 1897)]
The winter came and went, and the breach only widened with the progress of the months. The men dropped all pretense of religious observance. They grew more and more taciturn and sullen in their homes. They cared less and less for the society of their neighbors, and as they grew more miserable they grew more uncompromising. When little Ike was sick and Jane going to the spring just before dinner found a gourd of chicken broth, so fresh and hot that it had evidently been left but a few minutes before, she knew how it had come there, and hastened to the house with it. But Larkin saw the gourd and at a glance understood it, and asked,—
"Whar'd ye git that ar gourd? Whose gourd is that?" and snatching it from her, he took it to the door and flung it with all his might. Little Ike cried, for the odor of the broth had already tempted his fickle appetite, and Larkin bribed him to stop crying with promises of candy and all other injurious sweetmeats known to children of the Holler. But when the illness proved to be a sort of winter cholera terminating in flux, he was glad to maintain official ignorance of a bottle of blackberry cordial which also was left at the spring, and which proved of material benefit in the slow convalescence of Ike.
It was thought, at first, that Captain Jack Casey would be able to effect a reconciliation between the men. He was respected in the Holler, and was often useful in adjusting differences between neighbors. He was a justice of the peace, for that matter, and had the law behind him. But his military title and his reputation for fair dealing gave him added authority.
He was the friend of both men, and had known them both in the army. He was Eph's brother-in-law, beside, and their wives' friendship, like their own, dated from that prehistoric period, "before the war."
But even Captain Jack failed to move either of the two enraged neighbors.
Brother Manus made several ineffectual attempts at a reconciliation, but at last gave up all hope.