“Just this minute,” declared his wife, and she hastened to the water-shelf in the entry, returning with a dripping gourd. “Here, drink it! You won't say a word till you are ready.”
Porter drank slowly. “You may call that fresh water,” he sneered, “but you wouldn't ef you had it to swallow. I reckon you'd call old stump water fresh ef you could git news any the quicker by it. Well, it's about Nelson Floyd.”
“Nelson Floyd!” gasped Mrs. Porter. “He's gone and married Evelyn Duncan—that's my guess.”
“No, it ain't that,” declared Porter. “An' it ain't another Wade gal scrape that anybody knows of. The fact is nobody don't know what it is. Floyd went down to Atlanta Wednesday, so Mayhew says, to lay in a few articles o' stock that was out, an' to call on that new uncle o' his. He was to be back Wednesday night, without fail, to draw up some important mortgages fer the firm, an' a dozen customers has been helt over in town fer two days. They all had to go back without transactin' business, fer Floyd didn't turn up. Nor he didn't write a line, nuther. And, although old Mayhew has been firin' telegrams down thar, fust to Nelson an' later to business houses, not a thing has been heard o' the young man since last Wednesday. He hain't registered at no hotel in Atlanta. One man has been found that said he knowed Floyd by sight, an' that he had seed 'im walkin' about at night in the vilest street in Atlanta lookin' like a dead man or one plumb bereft of his senses.”
Cynthia stood staring at her father with expanded eyes, and then she sat down near a window, her face averted from the others. She said nothing.
“He's crazy,” said Mrs. Porter. “I've always thought something was wrong with that man. His whole life shows it. He was an outlaw when he was a child, and when he grew up he put on high' an' mighty airs, an' started to drinkin' like a lord. He'd no sooner let up on that than he got into that Wade trouble, an'—”
“Some think he was drugged, an' maybe put out of the way on the sly,” said Porter, bluntly. “But I don't know. Thoughts is cheap.”
“Hush, Nathan!” Mrs. Porter said, under her breath, for Cynthia had risen, and without looking to the right or left was moving from the room. “This may kill that poor child.”
“Kill her, a dog's hind foot!” Porter sneered. “To be a woman yorse'f, you are the porest judge of 'em I ever seed. You women are so dead anxious to have some man die fer you that you think the same reckless streak runs in yore own veins. You all said Minnie Wade had tuck powdered glass when she was sick that time an' was goin' to pass in 'er checks on this feller's account, but she didn't die fer him, nor fer Thad Pelham, nor the two Thomas boys, nor Abe Spring, nor none o' the rest.”
“You ought to be ashamed of speaking of your own child in the same breath with that girl,” said Mrs. Porter, insincerely, her eyes anxiously on the door through which Cynthia had gone.