“Don't you use them holy words, you wicked wretch! And if you're hintin' at hidin' in my house, you can't do it—not with Jane here—she would kill you, I believe—and not without her.”
“No, Nancy. I can see that. But where can I go? Even that place in the woods, they're watching that, and they would have me if I tried to go back.”
From an impulse as of indifference rather than consideration she said, “Go to Squire Braile. He let you off; let him take care of you.”
“Nancy!” he exclaimed. “I thought of that.”
She gathered up the basin and the towel she brought, and without looking at him again she said, “Well, go, then,” and turned and left him where he stood.
XVI
Matthew Braile was sitting in his wonted place, with his chair tilted against his porch wall, smoking. Dylks faltered a moment at the bars of the lane from the field of tall corn where he had been finding his way unseen from Nancy's cabin. He lowered two of the middle bars and when he had put them up on the other side he stood looking toward the old man. His long hair hung tangled on his shoulders; the white bandage, which Nancy had bound about his head, crossed it diagonally above one eye and gave this the effect of a knowing wink, which his drawn face, unshaven for a week, seemed to deprecate.
Braile stared hard at him. Then he tilted his chair down and came to the edge of his porch, and called in cruel mockery, “Why, God, is that you?”
“Don't, Squire Braile!” Dylks implored in a hoarse undertone. “They're after me, and if anybody heard you—”