The others were larger and of stout blue glass. A printed label said “Phosphate.” March pulled out a cork and smelled the contents. Opium again!
The box held the same drug as a dark paste.
“I mistrusted them horsephates a coople o’ times!” said Homer, imperturbably sagacious. “He wor too everlastin’ fond of ’em. He skeered me with the devil inter goin’ ter the drug store with a paper ter tell ’em for ter give me that ar’ one,” designating an empty phial. “Leastways, one like it. An’ Miss Hetty, she foun’ it in the garding, where I drapped it. Then, ’twas she tole me nivver to go nowhar ’thout ’twas she sent me. An’ I aint sence! An’ he’s t’reatened me orful a many a time ’cause what she said to me that time. I guess he bought ’em in New York, mos’ likely. He’s a sharp un—Mr. Wayt is!”
March eyed him suspiciously.
“How did you know where these things were, if you had nothing to do with hiding them!”
“Now”—stolid under the implied doubt, or not noticing it—“you reklec’ the Sunday night me ’n you was talkin’ here, ’n’ he come along, an’ I shinned up the tree? I bet”—with more animation than March had ever seen him display before—“he was a-comin’ for a drink then! ’Twas the very night before, when Miss Hetty, she come all the way up to my room, an’ sez she, ‘Homer,’ sez she, ‘Mr. Wayt has done it agin,’ she say. An’ so he had, an’ him a lyin’ on the study floor jes’ as you see him now—an’ Mrs. Wayt a-cryin’ over him. You see she’d b’lieved, sure an’ certain, he’d nuvver do so no more. But I mistrusted them horsephates. Now, that very night—Sunday night ’twas, ’n’ me an’ you was a-talkin’ here—as I was a-slidin’ down the tree I kotched inter a hole, an’ somethin’ sort o’ jingled, like glass. I nuvver t’ought no more ’bout it tell jes’ ez I come up to-night an’ see him a-sprawlin’ thar, an’ I smelled the stuff. I’ll jes’ hide ’em in the grass, an’ to-morrow early I’ll bury ’em in the garding. But it’s a quare cupboard, that is.”
While talking, he was busy spreading upon the turf a heavy shawl, such as were worn by men, forty years ago. “Now—ef you’ll lend a lift to him!” to the wondering observer.
The plan was ingenious, but Homer’s dexterity in carrying it out, and the sangfroid he maintained throughout, betokened an amount of practice at which March’s soul recoiled. It was frightfully realistic. Mr. Wayt was laid in the middle of the big plaid; the two ends were knotted tightly upon his chest, inclosing his arms, the other two about his ankles.
“I’ll hitch on to the heavy eend,” quoth the bunch of muscle and bone March had begun to admire. “Me bein’ useter to it nor what you be. You take holt on his feet.”
In such style the stately saint was borne up the back steps and laid upon the settee in the parsonage hall.