“She told you she went to Calhoun.” Pole’s eyes were mercifully averted. “I met her an’ Thad in Atlanta.”
Wade caught his breath. He shook from head to foot as with a chill.
“You say—Pole, you say——?”
Pole pulled at his mustache and looked down.
“Well, I reckon they wasn’t down thar to attend a Sunday-school convention, Jeff—they didn’t have that look to me. But I was so worried fer fear I mought be doin’ a woman injustice in my mind that, after they left me—to make sure, I went in the office o’ the hotel an’ made sure.”
Suddenly Wade put out his hand and laid it heavily on Pole’s shoulder. “Looky here, Baker,” he said, “if you are lying to me, I——”
“Hold on, hold on, Jeff Wade!” Pole broke in sternly. “Whenever you use words like them you smile! So fer, this has been a friendly talk, as I see it; but you begin to intimate that I’m a liar, an’ I’ll try my best to make you chaw the statement. You’re excited, but you mustn’t go too fur.”
“Well, I want the truth, by God, I want the truth!”
“Well, you are a-gittin’ it, with the measure runnin’ over,” Pole said, “an’ that ought to satisfy any reasonable man.”
“So you think then, that Nelson Floyd never done any—any o’ the things folks says he did—that ’twas jest report?”