“Stoliker,” she exclaimed, “I’m ashamed of you! You may hang a man if you like, but you have no right to starve him. Come straight in with me,” she said to the prisoners.
“Madam,” said Stoliker severely, “you must not interfere with the course of the law.”
“The course of stuff and nonsense!” cried the angry woman. “Do you think I am afraid of you, Sam Stoliker? Haven’t I chased you out of this very orchard when you were a boy trying to steal my apples? Yes, and boxed your ears, too, when I caught you, and then was fool enough to fill your pockets with the best apples on the place, after giving you what you deserved. Course of the law, indeed! I’ll box your ears now if you say anything more. Get down off your horse, and have something to eat yourself. I dare say you need it.”
“This is what I call a rescue,” whispered Yates to his linked companion.
What is a stern upholder of the law to do when the interferer with justice is a determined and angry woman accustomed to having her own way? Stoliker looked helplessly at Hiram, as the supposed head of the house, but the old man merely shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say: “You see how it is yourself. I am helpless.”
Mrs. Bartlett marched her prisoners through the gate and up to the house.
“All I ask of you now,” said Yates, “is that you will give Renmark and me seats together at the table. We cannot bear to be separated, even for an instant.”
Having delivered her prisoners to the custody of her daughter, at the same time admonishing her to get breakfast as quickly as possible, Mrs. Bartlett went to the gate again. The constable was still on his horse. Hiram had asked, by way of treating him to a noncontroversial subject, if this was the colt he had bought from old Brown, on the second concession, and Stoliker had replied that it was. Hiram was saying he thought he recognized the horse by his sire when Mrs. Bartlett broke in upon them.
“Come, Sam,” she said, “no sulking, you know. Slip off the horse and come in. How’s your mother?”
“She’s pretty well, thank you,” said Sam sheepishly, coming down on his feet again.