"Me an' Armindy understand one another," he said roughly.
Ephraim rode on, his guilty conscience forbidding any more conversation. He longed to give Elisha a hint of approaching danger—to say carelessly, "I hear the raiders'll be out tonight;" but he knew that he could not without betraying the whole truth.
Breakfast awaited him, and his mother sat in the doorway, smoking, when he arrived at home—a homely woman, yellow as saffron, wrinkled as parchment, and without a tooth in her mouth. Her face lighted up at the sight of her son, and she knocked the ashes from her pipe. He had been a good son, a steady boy, and his absence alarmed her.
"Law! but this is a relief!" she cried as he came in after caring for the mule. "I didn't know you 'lowed to stay out all night."
"I didn't, neither, when I left home."
"I was pestered, thinkin' o' the raiders. Anythin' happened to you?"
"Nothin', mother."
"Are you sick?"
"No."
She watched him silently while he ate sparingly of the breakfast. His dull eyes, his haggard face made her anxious. He had no appetite; he plainly did not care to talk. Her suspicions fell on Armindy Hudgins as the cause of his dejection. She began to question him about the party. She mentioned Armindy and Elisha Cole several times, and each time he betrayed some feeling. She felt resentful toward the girl.