She looked up at him with candid reassuring eyes. "I never keered none fur him," she protested. "He kem hyar all shot up, with the miners an' mounting boys hot foot arter him--an' we done what we could fur him. Gran'daddy 'lowed ez _he_ warn't 'sponsible fur whut the owners done, or hedn't done at the mine, an' he seen no sense in shootin' one man ter git even with another."
"But ye kep' his secret!" Kinnicutt persisted.
"What fur should I tell it--'t ain't mine?"
"That thar money in that box he buried ain't _his'n_, nuther!" he argued.
There was an inscrutable look in her clear eyes. She had risen, and was standing in the moonlight opposite him. The shadows of the vines falling over her straight skirt left her face and hair the fairer in the silver glister.
"'Pears like ter me," he broke the silence with his plaintive cadence, "ez ye ought ter hev tole me. I ain't keerin' ter know 'ceptin' ye hev shet me out. It hev hurt my feelin's powerful ter be treated that-a-way. Tell me now--or lemme go forever!"
She was suddenly trembling from head to foot. Pale she was always. Now she was ghastly. "Rufe Kinnicutt," she said with the solemnity of an adjuration, "ye don't keer fur sech ez this, fur _nuthin'_. An' I promised!"
He noted her agitation. He felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to wield his power, "Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made ter that man--or the word ye deny ter me! An' when I'm gone--I'm gone!"
"It's nuthin' ter me," he protested once more. "I kin keep it an' gyard it ez well ez you uns. But I won't be shet out, an' doubted, an' denied, like ez ef _I_ wan't fitten ter be trested with nuthin'!"
He stood a moment longer, watching her trembling agitation, and feeling that tingling exasperation that might have preceded a blow.
As she still stood motionless he turned away as if to make good his threat. He heard a vague stir among the leaves, and turning back he saw that the porch was vacant.
He had overshot the mark. In swift repentance he retraced his steps. He called her name. No response save the echoes. The house dogs, roused to a fresh excitement, were gathering about the door, barking in affected alarm, save one, to whom Kinnicutt was a stranger, that came, silent and ominous, dragging a block and chain from under the house. Kinnicutt heard the sudden drowsy plaints of the old rheumatic grandmother, as she was rudely awakened by the clamors, and presently a heavy footfall smote upon the puncheons that floored the porch. Old Byars himself, with his cracked voice and long gray hair, had left his pipe on the mantel-piece to investigate the disorder without.