“Twenty thousand dollars,” said the auctioneer, awkwardly. “Twenty thousand—do I hear—and sold to Colonel Putnam. I reckon the’ ain’t no use puttin’ up the others.”
There was great activity in the crowd. Everybody was trying to see the two brothers as they went arm in arm to Colonel Putnam’s carriage, and a moment later, when the vehicle with four occupants turned into the road leading toward George Putnam’s plantation, a unanimous cheer rose from the crowd.
THE CONVICT’S RETURN
The pedestrian trudged down the tortuous declivitous road of the mountain amidst the splendor of autumn-tinted leafage and occasional dashes of rhododendron flowers. Now and then he would stop and deeply breathe in the crisp air, as if it were a palpable substance which was pleasing to his palate. At such moments, when the interstices of trunks and bowlders would permit, his eyes, large with weariness, would rest on a certain farmhouse in the valley below.
“It’s identical the same,” he said, when he had completed the descent of the mountain and was drawing near to it. “As fer as I can make out, it hain’t altered one bit sence the day they tuk me away. Ef ever’thing seems purtier now, it may be beca’se it’s in the fall of the year an’ the maple-trees an’ the laurel look so fancy.”
Approaching the barn, the only appurtenance to the four-roomed house, farther on by a hundred yards, he leaned on the rail fence and looked over into the barnyard at the screw of blue smoke which was rising from a fire under a huge iron boiler.
“Marty’s killin’ hogs,” he said, reflectively. “I mought ‘a’ picked a better day fer gittin’ back; she never was knowed to be in a good humor durin’ hog-killin’.”
He half climbed, half vaulted over the fence, and approached the woman, who was bowed over an improvised table of undressed planks on which were heaped the dismembered sides, shoulders, and hams of pork. His heart was in his mouth, owing to the carking doubt as to his welcome which had been oozing into the joy of freedom ever since he began his homeward journey. But it was not his wife who looked up as his step rustled the corn-husks near her, but her unmarried sister, Lucinda Dykes.