“Me, Mr. Baker?”
Pole hung his head; he spat slowly. Was she mistaken, or had he actually turned pale? Was it that, or a trick of her vision in the vague starlight?
“Little sister,” he said, huskily, “you could trust me with yore life. I'd die rather than—than not stand to you in anything on earth. You see, if you happened to know any reason why Nelson Floyd—” Pole was interrupted by the loud grunting and squealing of his drove of hogs as they rushed round the fence-corner towards him. “Wait,” he said—“wait till I pour the'r feed in the trough.”
He took up the pail and disappeared for a moment behind the cow-house.
Cynthia felt a great lump of wondering suspense in her throat. What could he mean? What was coming? She had never seen Pole act so strangely before. Presently he came back to her, holding the dripping paddle with which he had stirred the dregs in the bottom of his slop-bucket. He leaned over the fence again.
“You see, it's this away, little sister,” he began, lamely. “You an' Nelson—that is, you an' him was sorter runnin' together. He went with you, I reckon, more, on the whole, than with any other young lady in this section, an', you see, ef anybody was in a position to know any particular trouble or worry he had, you mought be that one.”
“But I'm afraid I don't know anything of the kind,” she said, wonderingly, her frank eyes resting blankly on his face.
“I see you don't understand me,” he went on. “The God's truth is that I hain't no hand to talk about delicate matters to a young gal, an' you above all, but I want to know—I want some'n'' to build on. I don't know how to put what I want to ax. Maybe I'm away—away off, an' will want to kill myse'f fer even dreamin' that—but—well, maybe you'll git at what I mean from this. You see, I run in the room on you an' my wife not long ago an' ketched Sally an' you a-cryin' over some'n' or other you'd confided to 'er, an' then other things of a like nature has crapped up lately, an'—”
“I don't understand you, Mr. Baker,” said Cynthia, anxiously, when she saw he was going no further. “I really don't. But I assure you, I'm ready to tell you anything.”
“Ah! Are you? Well, I started to say Sally don't cry over other folks' matters unless they are purty sad, an' you know at the time you refused to tell me what yore trouble was. Maybe you ain't ready yet, little sister. But could you tell me, right out plain, what ailed you that day?”