“Well, come up here,” the Squire bade him. Dylks hobbled slowly forward, and painfully mounted the log steps to the porch, where Braile surveyed him in detail, frowning and twitching his long feathery eyebrows.
“I know I don't look fit to be seen,” Dylks began “but—”
“Well,” the Squire allowed after further pause, “you don't look as if you had just come 'down from the shining courts above in joyful haste'! Had any breakfast?”
“Nancy—Nancy Billings—gave me some coffee, and some cold pone—”
“Well, you can have some hot pone pretty soon. Laban there?”
“No, he's away at work still. But, Squire Braile—”
“Oh, I understand. I know all about Nancy, and her first husband and how he left her, and she thought he was dead, and married a good man, and when that worthless devil came back she thought she was living in sin with that good man—in sin!—and drove him away. But she's as white as any of the saints you lie about. It was like you to go to her the first one in your trouble. Well, what did she say?” “She said—” Dylks stopped, his mouth too dry to speak; he wetted his lips and whispered—“She said to come to you; that you would know what it was best for me to do; to—” He stopped again and asked, “Do you suppose any one will see me here?”
“Oh, like as not. It's getting time for honest folks to be up and going to work. But I don't want any trouble about you this morning; I had enough that other morning. Come in here!” He set open the door of one of the rooms giving on the porch, and at Dylks's fearful glance he laughed, not altogether unkindly. “Mis' Braile's in the kitchen, getting breakfast for you, though she don't know it yet. Now, then!” he commanded when he sat down within, and pushed a chair to Dylks. “Tell me all about it, since I saw you going up the pike.”
In the broken story which Dylks told, Braile had the air of mentally checking off the successive facts, and he permitted the man a measure of self-pity, though he caught him up at the close. “Well, you've got a part of what you deserve, but as usually happens with us rascals, you've got too much, at the same time. And what did Nancy advise?”
“She told me to come to you—”