Presently Ephraim came slowly across to the garden-patch where Barney was planting. He was breathing heavily, and grinning. When he reached Barney he stood still watching him, and the grin deepened. “Say, Barney,” he panted at length.
“Well, what is it?”
“You've lost your girl; did you know it, Barney?”
Barney muttered something unintelligible; it sounded like the growl of a dog, but Ephraim was not intimidated. He chuckled with delight and spoke again. “Say, Barney, Thomas Payne's got your girl; did you know it, Barney?”
Barney turned threateningly, but he was helpless before his brother's sickly face, and Ephraim knew it. That purple hue and that panting breath had gained an armistice for him on many a battle-field, and he had a certain triumph in it. It was power of a lugubrious sort, certainly, but still it was power, and so to be enjoyed.
“Thomas Payne's got your girl,” he repeated; “he was over there a-courtin' of her last night; a-settin' up along of her.”
Barney took a step forward, and Ephraim fell back a little, still grinning imperturbably. “You mind your own business,” Barney said, between his teeth; and right upon his words followed Ephraim's hoarse chuckle and his “Thomas Payne's got your girl.”
Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a mosquito. “Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know it? Thomas Payne's got your girl.”
Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear: “Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got—your—girl!” But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, and said not another word.
Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat. Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, “Barney, Thomas Payne has got your girl,” and ended in a choking giggle. Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft young flowers and weeds. “Oh, Charlotte!” he groaned out. “Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!” Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing of grief. “Oh, I can't, I can't!” he groaned. “I—can't—Charlotte! I can't—let any other man have you! No other man shall have you!” he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head; “you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!” Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool white bark and sobbed again like a girl. “Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!” he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.