“What fetched you, shore ’nough?” she asked abruptly.
Ewebanks knew that her suspicions were roused. He sat erect and clasped his coarse hands between his knees.
“My cousin Sally Wynn’s been over in the valley today,” he gulped. “It’s reported thar that yore sister, Mrs. Hansard, is purty low. We-uns talked it over—me’n my wife did—an’ Sally, an’ ’lowed you ort to know. They axed me to come tell you, but as I told them, I hain’t no hand to—it looks like they could ’a’ picked somebody——”
He broke off. There was little change in the grim, lined face under the gray hair, and the red-checked breakfast shawl which the woman wore like a hood. She turned the churn again to the light and peered down into the white depths.
Someone had once said in the hearing of Ewebanks that nothing could induce Martha Thompson to utter a word about her sister, and he wondered how she would treat the present disclosure. She let the churn resume its upright position and put the lid back into place; then she glanced at him.
“She—hain’t bad off, I reckon,” she said tensely.
“Purty low,” he replied, his eyes on the ground. “The fact is, Mrs. Thompson, ef you want to see ’er alive you’d better go over thar tomorrow at the furdest.”
Ewebanks knew he had gone a little too far in his last words, when Joe broke in fiercely:
“She won’t go a step! She sha’n’t set foot inside that cussed house. They’ve done ’thout us so fur, an’ they kin longer—dead, dyin’ or buried!”
“Hush, Joe!” Mrs. Thompson had left her churn, and with her hands wrapped in her apron was leaning against the door-jamb.