“You’d better come along in,” he ordered peremptorily. “You come along inside. I’ll rake up the fire and you can warm up a bit. I––I didn’t think, keeping you out here in the rain. Why, you’ll feel better after you’ve had a little rest. You ought not to be out all day in weather like this, anyway. You’re too––too–––”
He was going to say too old, but a quick thought saved him. Old Jerry did not want to accompany him; he would have done almost anything else with a light heart; but that big hand had fallen again upon his shoulder, and there was no choice left him.
Young Denny clicked the door shut before them and pulled a chair up before the stove with businesslike haste. After he had stuffed the fire-box full of fresh fuel and the flame was roaring up the pipe, he turned once more and stood, hands resting on his hips, staring down at the small figure slumped deep in its seat.
“I didn’t understand,” he apologized again, his voice very sober. “I––I ought to have remembered that maybe you’d be tired out and wet, too. But I didn’t––I was just thinking of how I could best show you––these things––so’s you’d understand them. You’re feeling better now?”
Furtively, from the corners of his eyes, Old Jerry 132 had been watching every move while the boy built up the fire. And now, while Denny stood over him talking so gravely, his head came slowly around until his eyes were full upon that face; until he was able to see clearly, there in the better light of that room, all the solicitude that had softened the hard lines of the lean jaw. It was hard to believe, after all that he had passed through, and yet he knew that it could not be possible––he knew that that voice could not belong to any man who had been nursing a maniacal vengeance behind a cunningly calm exterior.
There was no light of madness in those eyes which were studying him so steadily––studying him with unconcealed anxiety. Old Jerry could not have told how it had come about; but there in the light, with four good solid walls about him, he realized that a miracle had taken place. Little by little his slack body began to stiffen; little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh of deeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, for Young Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through which he had just passed.
“Godfrey” he thought, and the exclamation was so poignantly real within him that it took audible form without his knowledge. “Godfrey ’Lisha, but that was a close call! That’s about as narrer a squeak as I’ll ever hev, I reckon.”
And he wanted to laugh. An almost hysterical 133 fit of laughter straggled for utterance. Only because the situation was too precious to squander, only because he would have sacrificed both arms before confessing the terror which had been shaking him by the throat, was he able to stifle it. Instead, he removed his drenched and battered hat and passed one fluttering hand across his forehead, with just the shade of unsteadiness for which the affair called.
“Yes, I’m a-feelin’ better now,” he sighed. “Godfrey, yes, I’m a sight better already! Must ’a’ been just a little touch of faintness, maybe. I’m kinda subject to them spells when I’ve been overworked. And I hev been a little mite druv up today––druv to the limit, if the truth’s told. Things ain’t been goin’ as smooth’s they might. Why––why, they ain’t nobody’d believe what’s been crowded into this day, even if I was to tell ’em!”
He filled his lungs again and shoved both feet closer to the oven door.