IV

The following morning, "Oh, Gordon!" Lettice cried, "I like him ever so

much; he played and played with me."

Gordon had gone to the post-office, and was descending the slope from the

public road to his dwelling. He found Lettice sitting on the edge of the

porch, and, panting vigorously, the dog extended before her, an expression

of idiotic satisfaction on his shaggy face. They were, together, an

epitome of extreme youth; and Gordon's discontent, revived from the night

before, overflowed in facile displeasure.

"Don't you know better than to run him on a warm morning like this?" he

complained; "as like as not now he'll take a fit; young dogs mustn't get

their blood heated up."

The animation died from her countenance, leaving it almost sullen, her

shoulders drooped dejectedly. "It seems nothing suits you," she observed;

"you're cross when I don't like the dog and you're cross when I do. I

can't satisfy you, anyhow."

"There's some difference in making over the dog and playing him out. Come

here, General Jackson." The animal rose and yapped, backing playfully

away. "Don't you hear me? Come right here." The dog, sensitive to the

growing menace in the voice, moved still further away. "C'm here, damn

you," Gordon shot out. The dog grew stubborn, and refused to move forward;

and Gordon, his anger thoroughly aroused, picked up a large stone and

threw it with all his force, missing General Jackson by a narrow margin.

"It seems to me," Lettice observed in a studiously detached voice, "I

wouldn't throw stones at a dog I had paid two hundred dollars for."

Gordon was momentarily disconcerted. He had not intended to tell Lettice

how much the General had cost. And yet, he reflected, since the village

knew, with Sim Caley's wife in the house, it had been folly to hope to

keep it from her.

"It's his pedigree," he explained lamely; "champion stock, imported." His

temper again slowly got the better of his wisdom. "What if I did pay two

hundred dollars for him?" he demanded; "it's harmless, ain't it? I'd a

sight better do that than some other things I might mention."

"I only said," she repeated impersonally, "that I would not throw stones

at a dog that had cost so much money."

"You're getting on the money now, are you? Going to start that song?

That'll come natural to you. When I first married you I couldn't see how

you were old Pompey's daughter, but I might have known it would come out.

I might have known you weren't the daughter of the meanest man in

Greenstream for nothing.... I suppose I'll hear about that money all the

rest of my life."

"Perhaps I will die, and then you will have no bother."

"That's a nice way to talk; that makes me out a fine figure of a

man ... with Mrs. Caley in the kitchen there, laying right over every

word; the old vinegar bottle."

"Don't you say another word about Mrs. Caley," Lattice declared

passionately; "she nursed my mother in her last sickness; and she took

care of me for years, when there wasn't anybody else hardly knew if I was

alive or not. If it wasn't for Mrs. Caley right now I guess I'd be in an

early grave."

Gordon Makimmon stood silenced by the last outburst. The tall, meager

figure of Mrs. Caley appeared upon the porch. She was clad in black

calico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lips

quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon

directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental,

dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and,

discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and

departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into the

buggy.

"I thought I'd go over to the farm beyond the priest's," he answered

Gordon's query; "Tol'able's an awful slack hand with cattle."

"Your wife ought to run that place; she'd walk those steers around on a

snake fence."

Simeon Caley preserved a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean.

He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in a

countenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. It

was said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned loose

on the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther end of

the valley.

His voice, like his eyes, was gentle. "Come right along, Gord; there's

some draining you ought to see to. It's a nice drive, anyways." Gordon

took the reins, slapping them on the rough, sturdy back of the horse, and

they started up the precarious track to the road. General Jackson's head

hung panting, wild-eyed, from the side of the vehicle.

V

It was late when they returned from the farm. Gordon left the buggy at the

Courthouse. The thought of his dwelling, with Lattice's importunate

fancies and complaints, was distasteful to him. A long-drawn-out evening

in the monotonous sitting room, with the grim form of Mrs. Caley in the

background, was insupportable. There was no light in the office of the

_Bugle_, but there was a pale yellow blur in the lower windows of

Peterman's hotel. It might be that a drummer had arrived, and was

entertaining a local circle with the pungent wit of the road; and Gordon

made his way toward the hotel.

It was a painted, wooden structure, two stories in height, with a wing

that ran back from the road. The rooms in the latter section were reached

from an outside, uncovered gallery, gained by a flight of steps at the

back. Contrary to his expectation no one was in the office; a lamp shone

on an empty array of chairs. But some one was on the gallery above; he

could see a white skirt through the railing, make out the dark blot of a

head upon the night. The illumination from within shone on his face.

The form above him leaned forward over the railing. "Mr. Makimmon," a

woman's voice said, "if you want Mr. Peterman, I'll call him. He's at the

back of the house."

Gordon was totally unaware of her identity.

"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "I wasn't after him in particular--"

"You don't know me," she challenged, laughing; "it's Meta Beggs; I teach

the school, you know."

Instantly the memory returned to him of a woman's round, gleaming

shoulders slipping into a web of soft white; he recalled the

school-teacher's bitter arraignment of her life, her prospects. "I didn't

know you," he admitted, "and that's the fact; it was the dark." He

hesitated once more, conscious of the awkwardness of his position, talking

upward to an indistinguishable shape. "I heard you were back," he

continued impotently.

"Yes," she assented, "there was nothing else open.... Won't you come up

and smoke a cigarette? It's pleasant here on the gallery."

He mounted the steps, making his way over the narrow, hollow-sounding

passage to her side. She was seated overlooking the rift of the valley.

"I'll get you a chair," she said, rising. At her side a door opened into a

dim room. "No, no," he protested, "let me--in here?"

He entered the room. It was, he divined, hers. His foot struck against a

chair, and his hand caught the back. A thin, clinging under-garment rested

on it, which he deposited on a vague bed. It stuck to his fingers like a

cobweb. There was just room on the balcony to arrange the chairs side by

side.