He drew a difficult breath that was almost a sob.
“You—will—pay—me,” he repeated, a dreadful self-loathing struggling with the despair in his eyes. Then he went away, quietly, as he had come.
PEG MORRISON smote the rough brown backs of his horses with a practised slap of the lines.
“Y’ remind me o’ the sect in gen’ral,” he observed, in a loud, critical voice, as the off member of the team backed and fidgeted uneasily. “When y’ want a female, woman er hoss, to go, thet’s th’ pertickler time they elect t’ stan’ still, an’ when y’ want ’em to stan ’still—— Whoa, thar; can’t ye?”
Mr. Morrison paused to wipe the moisture from his brow with an ancient handkerchief of red and white, while he gazed lovingly at the wide expanse of glistening brown earth which had been deeply ploughed, and more or less levelled into smoothness under the action of the harrow which the horses were dragging.
“Planted t’ onions,” he went on, still addressing his observations to the horses, whose heads drooped sleepily toward the fresh-smelling ground, “this ’ere ten acres ’ll net, anyway you figger it, four hunderd an’ fifty dollars t’ the acre; an’ that’ll total—l’me see, somethin’ like——”
Mr. Morrison’s gaze being wholly introspective at this stage of the mental problem under consideration, he failed to notice the man who came swinging along the road at a smart rate of speed. At sight of the old man leaning meditatively against the fence, a spent dandelion stalk in his mouth, the pedestrian halted.
“Why, hello, Peg!” he called out in a clear and somewhat authoritative voice.
The stranger wore a rough suit of weather-stained tweeds; and his felt hat, set at a becoming angle on his curly head, shaded a face bronzed by sun and wind almost to the color of the full brown beard curling away from his red mouth with a careless boldness repeated in the humorous blue eyes which roved over the shabby old figure by the fence.
He laughed outright at the puzzled look in Morrison’s face.
Then he folded his arms on top of the fence.
“Well, how goes it, old man?” he inquired. “Same lazy old horses—eh? Same job, same season of the year, same old clothes, I should say—even to the red and white bandanna. Makes me feel as if I’d been dreaming. Maybe I have; who knows?”