“What for?” the girl answered sleepily. Then, “Oh, I'll come. She ain't sick, is she, Aunt Nancy? Oh, I do hope she ain't sick!”
“No. She ain't sick,” Nancy said, as she put her hands up to help the girl place her feet aright on the rungs of the ladder. “But—listen!” she whispered as the voice outside called again. “It's that miser'ble wretch! It's Joseph Dylks! I've got to go to him! Don't you say a word, Jane Gillespie! He's Joey's father, and he must be at death's door, or he wouldn't come to mine.”
She left the girl standing dazed, and ran out and round the cabin. In the shadow that it cast in the moon, Dylks crouched close in the angle made by the chimney.
“Oh, Nancy!” he implored her, “do give me something to eat! Something warm. Coffee, if you've got it. I've been sick, and I'm starving.”
She knew without seeing it in the shadow how he was stretching out pleading hands to her, and she had mercy upon him. But she said stonily, “Wait a minute. Don't be a cry-baby,” and ran back to the door, and called to the girl within, “Rake open the fire, Jane, and set the kittle on.” Then she ran back to Dylks and stood over him. “Where you been? Don't you know they'll kill you if they ketch you?”
“Yes, I know it, Nancy. But I knew this would be the last place they would come for me. Will the coffee be ready soon? Oh, I'm so faint! I reckon I'm going to die, Nancy.”
“I reckon you ain't goin' to die before you get your coffee. It'll be ready as soon as the kittle boils.”
She stood looking grimly down at him, while he brokenly told, so far as he knew it, the story of the days he had passed in hiding.
“I reckon,” she said, with bitter scorn, “that I could have fetched you out. I'd 'a' brought you some hot coffee to the door of your den, and you'd 'a' come when you smelt it.”
“Yes, that's true,” he owned in meek acceptance of her scorn.