Presently, through the dusk, she saw Pole at his hog-pen in the edge of a little thicket behind his cottage.
“Pig-oop-pig-oo!” she heard him calling. “Dem yore lazy hides, ef you don't come on I'll empty this bucket o' slop on the ground an' you kin root fer it. I've mighty nigh ripped the linin' out o' my throat on yore account.” Then he descried Cynthia coming towards him over the dew-damp grass and he paused, leaning on the rail-fence, his eyes resting expectantly on her.
“Oh, it's you, little sister!” he exclaimed, pleasantly. “That's sorter foolish o' you gittin' them little feet o' yore'n wet in this dew. It may settle on yore lungs an' keep you from j'inin' in the singin' Sunday.”
“I want to see you,” Cynthia said, in a voice that shook. “I heard you calling your hogs, and thought I'd catch you here.”
“Well, little sister, I hain't very nice-lookin' in this old shirt an' pants of many colors, like Joseph's coat, but every patch was sewed on by the fingers o' the sweetest, most patient little woman God ever made, an' I hain't ashamed of 'em; but she is—God bless 'er!—an' she'd have a spasm ef she knowed I talked to you in 'em.”
“My father says you went down to Atlanta,” Cynthia said, falteringly, “and I thought—”
“Yes, I went down.” Pole avoided her fixed stare.
“You went to see if you could learn anything of Mr. Floyd's whereabouts, didn't you?”
“Yes, I did, little sister. I hain't a-talkin' much. Mayhew says it's best to sorter lie low until some'n' accurate is found out, an' while I did my level best down thar, I've got to acknowledge I'm as much in the dark as anybody else. In fact, I'm mighty nigh bothered to death over it. Nelson, poor boy, seems to have disappeared clean off'n the face o' the earth. The only thing I have to build on is the fact that—an' I hate to say it, little sister—the fact that he evidently did start to drinkin' again. He told me once that he wasn't plumb sure o' hisse'f, an' that any big trouble or despair might overthrow his resolutions. Now, he's been drinkin', I reckon—an' what could 'a' been his trouble? I went three times to his uncle's, but the doctors wouldn't let me see 'im. The old man's broke down with nervous prostration from business troubles, an' they are afeard he's goin' to kick the bucket. Comin' back on the cars—”
Pole's voice died away. He crossed and recrossed his hands on the fence. He avoided her steady stare. His massive eyebrows met on his wrinkled forehead. It was as if he were suffering inward pain. “I say—as I set in the train on the way back tryin' an' tryin' to find some explanation, the idea come to me that—since trouble was evidently what upset Nelson—that maybe you mought be able to throw some light on it.”