"Now that's too bad, really," soliloquized the Englishman. "Gad! I wouldn't have offended him, intentionally, for fifty dollars. But he is a cranky old Johnny, I must say."
He filled his pipe, cleared the cards from the table, and sat down before the crackling stove. Old Wigmore's show of temper soon gave way, in his mind, to the more startling and mysterious events of the evening. The marks on the card were strange enough; but the way in which the sight of those marks had affected Jim Harley was altogether extraordinary. It was not what he would have expected from Harley—or from any one in the settlement, for that matter. The incident smacked of the Wild West of fiction rather than of the real backwoods of New Brunswick. And Harley was such a sensible fellow, too; hard-working, prosperous, with a fine wife, two children, and such a delightful sister. Yes, a charming sister! And yet he had flown clean off the handle at sight of two little red marks on the face of the six of clubs. Really, it was preposterous! Idiotic! Perhaps the poor chap was ill—on the verge of a nervous breakdown from overwork? Or perhaps some silly old superstition was to blame for the distressing incident?
"Well, it beats me to a standstill," he murmured, at last; "but I think Jim Harley will feel like a fool when he wakes up to-morrow morning and remembers what an ass he has made of himself. I hope the other fellows have kept him from making a scene at home and frightening that fine little sister of his—or his wife, either, of course."
Then Mr. Rayton closed the drafts of the stove, fastened doors and windows, and went upstairs to bed.
In the meantime, Jim Harley had walked up and down the country roads for an hour and a half before he had convinced Doctor Nash and Benjamin Samson that he was not insane, not feverish, and not to be forced into an explanation of his remarkable behavior at Rayton's. They went off to their homes at last, Samson disheartened, Nash sarcastic. Then Harley turned to young David Marsh.
"Davy," he said, "I don't want you to think I have gone cracked in the upper story; but I can't tell you, just now, why I've been acting so queer to-night. I got a scare—but I guess there's nothing to it. Anyhow, I want you to keep clear of my place for a day or two—to keep clear of Nell."
"What's that!" exclaimed Marsh indignantly. "Keep clear of your place, is it? What the devil is the matter with me—or with you? You think I ain't good enough for your sister, do you—because you've got some money and I haven't. Damn your place!"