They had come to where their ways separated, and, with his hat in his hand, and his heart full of an inexplicable, transcendental something, he stood under the trees and watched her move away.
CHAPTER XXVII
N the day following Long's second visit to Dixie, Henley's affairs took him to Carlton. He was at the cotton-compress making arrangements to have a quantity of cotton prepared for shipment, when he met one of Long's clerks.
"Have you seen Mr. Long?" the young man asked.
"No, I've just got in," Henley answered. He could not have explained the fact, not being given to self-analysis, but he had vaguely determined that he would make every possible effort to avoid the storekeeper. In spite of his good intentions to aid Dixie in the contemplated alliance, he had come to regard it as altogether too incongruous an affair to be viewed favorably. What right had any man to her? What manner of man could possibly be worthy of her, much less the stupid blockhead who was thrusting himself upon her as Long was?
"Well, he's looking for you, Mr. Henley," the clerk said. "It must be important, for he's been to the bank and post-office three times since he heard you'd got in. It really looks like he's in trouble of some sort."
"Business gone crooked?" Henley inquired, as he watched the clerk's face with almost anxious eyes. "Maybe he's been buying futures?"
"Oh no, it ain't that!" the young man hastened to say. "He don't speculate in anything. He's dead sure of everything he touches. No, it ain't that, and business never was brisker, but we boys are doing it all. He ain't much help; don't do anything but write letters and tear 'em up, and talk about marryin' to every man, woman, an' child that happens in. He was all right and sound, and regular as a clock, till you fetched that girl in from over your way and introduced him. Come down right away, Mr. Henley. I'll tell 'im I saw you."