"We shall probably find him at the stables, feeding the horses."
Back we trudged by my air-line, well-worn but narrow. I fancy that my father took note of my familiarity with the path, but he did not speak of it. I marched in front of him, gloomy and desperate. Some of the others talked low as they straggled along. The girls kept up a hissing whispering, for which I hated them with my whole soul. I think that my mother and Miss Davidson shed some furtive tears, for my case was black, and they were tender-hearted.
Spotswoode was looking after his plough-horses, as my father had conjectured. At his master's shout, he emerged from the stalls and presented himself in the stable door. Ungainly, dirty, bare-footed, his ragged wool hat on the back of his unkempt woolly poll, his jaw dropping in idiotic amazement at sight of the party—he was a ludicrous figure in the bath of late sunshine that brought out every uncomely item of the picture. Preoccupied and distraught as I was, I saw how the dust from the stable floor floated in golden clouds to the cobwebbed rafters, as the sun struck past the man in the doorway and glorified the murky interior.
I rushed through the yard, heedless of manure heaps, and young pigs and calves scattered by my impetuous approach.
"Oh, Spotswoode!" in a voice that cracked and went to pieces as I ran, "somebody has stolen my beet! You can tell father—"
A hot valve closed in my windpipe and shut out the rest.
Spotswoode's jaw hung more loosely; his eyes were utterly vacant.
"Ya-as, little Mistis!" he drawled, and slunk back into the stable.
"What do you mean, sir? Come back here, this minute!" called his master.
When he reappeared, he carried in both hands, extended, after the similitude of a pre-historic monkey making a votive offering—something dark-red and pot-bellied, and more immense than I had dreamed it could look. A cluster of cropped leaves crowned it, a taper root, a foot long, depended from the bottom.