“Mendin' up the bridge, ma'am,” said Henry thickly, for his mouth was full of rusty-looking nails. “There's a couple of weak planks here, ma'am, that I noticed the other afternoon, and they seemed to me dangerous to life and limb over this here stream at such a height. If a person fell through, ma'am, there would n't be much chance for him, would there?”
“I should think not. You're quite right.”
“Better wait till I've got it fixed before you goes acrost, ma'am. It will be a matter of a few hours, and I ain't sure't will be safe then. The whole bridge should be rebuilt.”
“We'll stay on this side,” said Mrs. Brane; “we can go back and walk along the ridge. I don't think the air is particularly healthy down in this swamp, anyway, even at this time of the year. We won't be back this way, Henry. Make a good job of it.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Henry, with one of his servile, thin-lipped smiles, “I mean to make a regular good job.”
He began to hammer away vigorously. He had quite an assortment of tools, a saw and an axe and some planks. It really looked as if he were going to make a thorough good job of it, and I hoped he would. A fall through the bridge into that thick, gray, turbid water with its faint odor of rottenness—it was not a pleasant thought. And even a very loud crying for help would not reach “The Pines.” There was no nearer place, and the road led only to us. Not a nice spot for an accident at all!
Mrs. Brane and I hastened back to the higher ground, where we found a path, soft with pine needles, where the sunlight sifted through wide branches to the red-brown, hushed earth.
“You see,” she said, “there is no safe place for confidence. If I had not happened to see Henry at just that instant, he would have heard my suspicions, and Heaven knows what effect they might have had on his dull, honest, old mind!”
An honest, old mind, indeed!—if my own suspicions were correct. I wondered if the whiskers were false. Henry was really too perfect an image of the reliable old family servant. He might have been copied from a book.
“Well, here we can look about us, at any rate,” I said; “there's no place for eavesdroppers to hide in.”