"I don't doubt it. We can all set a trap for a fox, but it takes a shrewd trapper to catch him."
The old man chuckled. She looked at him and said that he would have been hauled off long ago, but that the devil didn't care to hitch up for one—Yankee-like, wanting a load whenever he drove forth. "But before you go, Lewson, I want you to promise me one thing,—that you will come back. You've got me half-way into the notion that you can."
"I will come back the third night, ma'am," he replied, his voice earnest. "When my body has been in the grave three days I will come back to my room and meet you there."
Milford turned away. The old woman followed him. "Do you believe he can come back?" she asked.
His sharp eyes cut round at her, like the swing of a scythe. "An old log may learn to float up-stream," he said. She stepped in front of him. "You've done somethin' that you don't want known," she declared. "As smart a man as you wouldn't come out here and work on a farm for nothin'."
"I don't expect to work for nothing."
"Come into the house, Bill. Those women want to get acquainted with you."
"Why don't they get acquainted with their husbands?"
"I know it," she replied, with a look, and in a younger eye the light would have been a gleam of mischief, but with her it was a glint almost of viciousness. "I know it. They are always after a curiosity. They've got it into their heads that you've done some sort of deviltry, and they want to talk to you. One of them said her husband was such a dear, dull business man. And nearly all of them hate children."
"I hate a woman that hates children," Milford replied, and the old woman said, "I know it."