CHAPTER XVIII
AS Paul walked homeward a wave of transcendental ecstasy fairly lifted him from the ground. The stars and all space seemed his. He laughed; he sang; he whistled; a prayer of mystic delight rippled from his lips.
He was drawing near the gate to Hoag's grounds when he noticed a man on a mule in the middle of the road. The rider's short legs swung back and forth from the plodding animal's flanks like pendulums, but his face was toward the village and Paul did not recognize him. Presently, however, when the gate was reached the rider was heard to cry “Whoa!” and Paul knew the voice. It was that of Tye, the shoemaker.
“How are you, Uncle Si?” Paul quickened his step and approached just as the old man was about to dismount.
“Oh!”—the cobbler settled back in his saddle—“I'm glad to see you. I've been over the mountain deliverin' a big raft o' work. I shod a whole family—two grown-ups an' ten children. I want to see you, an' I was goin' to hitch an' go to the house.”
“I see, I see,” Paul smiled easily. “Like all the rest, you want to warn me to look out for Jeff Warren.”
“Not a bit of it—you are away off!” Tye stroked his short beard with the fingers which held his riding-switch and grinned confidently. “That will take care of itself. I don't have to be told what a feller with your light will do. I'll bet a dollar to a ginger-cake that you've been to see 'em already, an' you didn't act the fool, neither.”
With a laugh Paul admitted it. “I had a narrow escape,” he added. “Jeff wanted to brain me on the spot with an ax.”
“But you bet he didn't,” Silas chuckled, “an' I'll lay he's lookin' at things in a brighter light than ever fell across his path before. But I've come to see you about business—strict earthly business, an' it's your business, not mine. Paul, you've heard of Theodore Doran an' the big cotton-factory he's just built at Chester?”
“Oh, yes,” Paul returned. “Some of my men have gone over there to work.”