CHAPTER V
THAT afternoon Paul went to Grayson, noting few changes in the place. The sun was fiercely beating down on the streets of the Square. Two or three lawyers, a magistrate, the county ordinary, and the clerk of the court sat in chairs on the shaded side of the Court House. Some were whittling sticks, others were playing checkers, all were talking politics. Under the board awnings in front of the stores the merchants sat without their coats, fighting the afternoon heat by fanning themselves and sprinkling water on the narrow brick sidewalks. A group of one-horse drays, on which idle negroes sat dangling their legs and teasing one another, stood in the shade of the hotel. The only things suggesting coolness were the towering mountains, the green brows of which rose into the snowy, breeze-blown clouds overhead.
Paul found Silas Tye at his bench in his shop. He was scarcely changed at all. Indeed, he seemed to be wearing exactly the same clothing, using the same tools, mending the same shoes. On his bald pate glistened beads of sweat which burst now and then and trickled down to his bushy eyebrows. Paul had approached noiselessly, and was standing looking in at him from the doorway, when the shoemaker glanced up and saw him. With an ejaculation of delight he dropped his work and advanced quickly, a grimy hand held out.
“Here you are, here you are!” he cried, drawing the young man into the shop. “Bearded and brown, bigger an' stronger, but the same Paul I used to know. How are you? How are you?”
“I'm all right, thank you,” Paul answered, as he took the chair near the bench and sat down. “How is Mrs. Tye?”
“Sound as a dollar, and simply crazy to see you,” Silas replied, with a chuckle. “If you hadn't come in we'd 'a' got a hoss an' buggy from Sid Trawley's stable an' 'a' rid out to see you. Jim Hoag this mornin' was tellin' about you gittin' back, an' said he'd already hired you to manage for him. Good-luck, good-luck, my boy; that's a fine job. Cynthy's just stepped over to a neighbor's, an' will be back purty soon. Oh, she was tickled when she heard the news—she was so excited she could hardly eat her dinner. She thought a sight of you. In fact, both of us sort o' laid claim to you.”
“Till I disgraced myself and had to run away,” Paul sighed. “I'm ashamed of that, Uncle Si. I want to say that to you first of all.”
“Don't talk that way.” Silas waved his awl deprecatingly. “Thank the Lord for what it's led to. Hoag was tellin' the crowd how you come back to give yourself up. Said he believed it of you, but wouldn't of anybody else. Lord, Lord, that was the best news I ever heard! Young as you are, you'll never imagine how much good an act o' that sort will do in a community like this. It is a great moral lesson. As I understand it, you fought the thing with all your might and main—tried to forget it, tried to live it down, only in the end to find that nothin' would satisfy you—nothin' but to come back here and do your duty.”
“Yes, you are right,” Paul assented. “I'll tell you all about it some time. I'm simply too happy now to look back on such disagreeable things. It was awful, Uncle Si.”