The old man had come to exult over him, and what could he do in his own house? Ah, there was only one thing to be done. Everything pushed him towards it.
But now—he would not be so cowardly as not to face the man he hated, though a step into the brush beside the road would have concealed him. As he approached he saw the Doctor's tall figure filling the height of the doorway, though there was plenty of room to spare on each side. He was talking to Melissa Yarebrough, who was within making a fire as a preliminary to her cleaning and cooking operations.
"He sent you-all over, did he? Well, Ah 'low that means he's coming along in a little bit. He's been away? Is that so? Ah wonder where. Oh, here he is. How are you, Baron? Pretty day, isn't it? Melissa tells me you-all've been away."
"Yes," curtly. "I have been away, as no one should know better than you."
"Better'n me? Ah never knew it till this minute when Melissa told me. Ah was at Mrs. Carroll's this morning, and she commissioned me to find out where you-all were at, and why you hadn't been to see her. She had sent Sydney to my house for news, but Ah missed her on the road somehow. The old lady put me through mah catechism, and Ah couldn't tell her anything about you since the day Sophy and Ah were here, so Ah came by to find out."
"Do you dare say to me, sir, that you do not know where I have been?"
"Ah certainly do say it! How in the world should Ah know all the movements of people in God-forsaken coves like this?"
The German's persistence was beginning to irritate the Carolinian, grown autocratic and unaccustomed to question by long years of practice among a country-folk submissive to the dictation of a leader.
"You are under my r-roof there where you stand. Come you down here where only heaven's blue covers you, and I will tell you some things which it is well that you should know."
To keep them out of mischief Friedrich thrust his clinched hands into his pockets. Morgan did not see the application of von Rittenheim's words about the sky, but he felt a threat in his tone, and, being no coward, he came down the steps promptly. He even went so far as to dispense with his quid.