Jerry sat down on a broken chair and stared at him, as he seated himself on the table, gripping the edge on either side with his scaly brown hands, and gazed down at the floor of the cabin.
"If you didn't take it, why did you have it here? I saw you last night on Macpherson's driveway," Jerry said, wondering, meanwhile, why she should argue with an old thieving fellow like Fishing Teddy—Jerusha Darby's niece and heir some fine day, if she only chose, to all of the Darby dollars.
"I can't never explain to you, lady. They's troubles in everybody's lots, I reckon. Mine ain't nothin' but a humble one, but it ain't so much different from big folks's in trouble ways. An' we all have to do the best we can with what comes to us to put up with. I 'ain't never harmed nobody, nor kep' a thing 'at wa'n't mine longer 'n I could git it back. You ask York Macpherson, an' he'll tell ye the truth. He never sent ye down here, York didn't."
The old man ceased squeaking and looked down at his stubby legs and old shoes. Was he lying and whining for mercy, being caught with the spoils of his thieving?
Jerry's big eyes were fixed on him as she tried to fathom the real situation. The bunch of grubs on the Winnowoc local—common country and village folk—had been far below her range of interest, to say nothing of sympathy. Yet here she sat in the miserable shack of a hermit fisherman, an all-but-acknowledged thief, with his loot discovered, studying him with a mind where pity and credulity were playing havoc with her better judgment and her aristocratic breeding. Had she fallen so low as this, or had she risen to a newer height of character than she had ever known before?
Suddenly the old grub hunched down on the table before her looked up. Jerry remembered afterward how clear and honest the gaze of those faded yellow eyes set in a multitude of yellow wrinkles. His hands let go of the table's edge and fitted knuckle into palm as he asked, in a quavering voice:
"Be you really Jim Swaim's girl who used to live up in that there Winnowoc country back yander in Pennsylvany?"
Jerry's heart thumped violently. It was the last word she had expected from this creature. "Yes, I'm Jim's only child." The same winsome smile that made the artistic Eugene Wellington of Philadelphia adore her beamed now on this poor old outcast down by the deep hole of the Sage Brush.
"An' be you hard up, an' earnin' your own livin' by yourself, did ye say? 'Ain't ye got a rich kin back East to help ye none?" The voice quavered up and down unsteadily.
"Yes, I have a rich aunt, but I'm taking care of myself. It makes me freer, but I have to be particular not to—to—lose any money right now," Jerry said, frankly.