Throughout the account, the listener sat sprawled in the big willow rocker, his slippered feet resting 168 on the porch rail. The huge body was crumpled into an awkward posture, which was never changed, once the history was begun. The curved wooden pipe hung from his lips, black against the iron gray cascade of beard, but he did not draw at it again, after the opening-sentences from his granddaughter’s lips. Plutina, looking down, perceived that the folded hands, lying in his lap, were clenched so strongly that the knuckles showed bloodless. Yet, he made no movement, nor offered any word of comment or of question. When the girl had made an end, and sat waiting distressedly for his verdict, he still rested mute, until the silence became more than she could endure, and she cried out in pleading:
“Kain’t ye fergive me, Gran’pap?”
Uncle Dick turned, and looked reproachfully at the distraught girl. A great tenderness shone from the black eyes, in which age had not dimmed the brilliance. As she saw the emotion there, a gasp of rapturous relief broke from Plutina’s lips. The stern restraints of her training were broken down in that moment. She dropped to her knees by the old man’s side, and seized his hands, and kissed them, and pressed them to her bosom. He released one of them presently, and laid it gently on the dusk masses of his grandchild’s hair in silent blessing. 169 His voice, when at last he spoke, was softer than she had heard it ever before.
“Why, Tiny, ye mustn’t be afeared o’ yer ole gran’pap. I thinks a heap o’ my kin, an’ ye’re the clusest. I loves ye gal—more’n anythin’ er anybody else in the world, though I wouldn’t want Alviry to hear thet. I hain’t mindin’ what ye done none. I’d stan’ by ye, Tiny, if he had the hull cussed Gov’ment at yer back. I hain’t got no likin’ fer revenuers, but I got a heap less for Dan Hodges.”
He paused for a moment and lifted his hand from the girl’s head to stroke the gray beard thoughtfully, before he continued:
“I been thinkin’ a right-smart lot o’ things jest lately. I ’low I’m a-gittin’ old, mebby. An’ I opine as ’tween the revenuers and Dan Hodges, I hain’t so much agin the Gov’ment as I was.”
Again, he fell silent, as if in embarrassment over an admission so at variance with the tenets of a lifetime. Then he spoke with sudden briskness:
“But ye’d orter a-killed the critter then an’ thar, Tiny!”
“I jest somehow couldn’t, Gran’pap. I’m shore sorry.” The girl felt poignant shame for the weakness thus rebuked.
“I ’low I hain’t likely to have no sech feelin’s a-holdin’ o’ me back,” Uncle Dick remarked, drily. “Hit’s my foolishness bailin’ ’im out got us in the 170 pizen mess. I ’low I’ll cancel the bond. But, fust, I’d have to take the skunk to the jail-house, dead er alive. He’ll stan’ some urgin’, I reckon.”