"I understand," Ann broke in—"they would know I had a hand in it."
"Yes, they would know that, of course, if I made use of that particular check."
Ann Boyd rested her massive jaw on her hand in such a way as to hide her face from his view. She was still and silent for a minute, then she rose, and, going to the fire, she bent to the flame of a pine-knot and destroyed the slip of paper.
"I don't usually keep that much money about the house," she said, looking down on him, "but I happen to have some hidden away. Go out and get your horse ready and I'll bring it to you at the fence."
He obeyed, rising stiffly from his chair and reaching for his worn slouch hat.
He was standing holding his bony horse by the rein when she came out a few minutes later and gave him a roll of bills wrapped in a piece of cloth.
"Here it is," she said. "You came after it under a sense of duty, and I am sending it the same way. I may be made out of odd material, but I don't care one single thing about the girl. If you had come and told me she was dead, I don't think I'd have felt one bit different. It might have made me a little curious to know which of us was going next—you, me, or her—that's all. Good-bye, Joe Boyd."
"Good-bye, Ann," he grunted, as he mounted his horse. "I'll see that this matter goes through right."
[XVIII]
Colonel Preston Chester and his son Langdon were at breakfast two days after this. The dining-room of the old mansion was a long, narrow chamber on the first floor, connected with the brick kitchen outside by a wooden passage, roofed, latticed at both sides, and vine-grown. The dining-room had several wide windows which opened on a level with the floor of the side veranda. Strong coffee, hot biscuits, and birds delicately browned were brought in by a turbaned black woman, who had once been a slave in the family, and then she discreetly retired.