The words seemed to epitomize all religion, all value, all hope, and somehow they so dwelt in his mind that the next day he was moved to add a personal message to old Ross Gilhooley in sending the more important information to Bruce.
"Let on ter Ross," he charged the envoy, "ez--ez--that thar jedgmint an' execution issued war jes' formal--ye mought say--jes' ter hev all the papers reg'lar."
By virtue of more attrition with the world the mail-rider was more sophisticated than his enemy, and sooth to say, more sophistical.
"Ross is writ-proof, the old fool, though he war minded ter cut me out'n my levy if he could! But waal, jes' tell him from me ez we-uns hev hed a heap o' pleasure in the baby's company in the Chris'mus, an' we-uns expec' ter borry him some whenst they all gits home!"
To the child's kindred the news was as if he had risen from the dead, and the gratitude of the Gilhooleys to Petrie knew no bounds. They had accounted the baby drowned when, missing him, they had retraced their way, finding naught but a bit of old blanket on which he had lain, close to the verge of the cruel river. Ross Gilhooley, softened and rendered tractable by exile and sorrow, upon his return lent himself to an affected warmth toward Peter Petrie which gradually assumed all the fervors of sincerity. The neighbors indeed were moved to say that the two friends and ancient enemies, when both on all fours and barking for the delight of the baby, were never so little like dogs in all their lives.
A mere moment seems an inconsiderable factor in life--only its multiplication attaining importance and signifying time. It could never have occurred to Walter Hoxer that all his years of labor, the aggregation of the material values of industry, experience, skill, integrity, could be nullified by this minimum unit of space--as sudden, as potent, as destructive, as a stroke of lightning. But after the fact it did not remind him of any agency of the angry skies; to him it was like one of the obstructions of the river engineers to divert the course of the great Mississippi, a mattress-spur, a thing insignificant in itself, a mere trifle of woven willow wands, set up at a crafty angle, against the tumultuous current. Yet he had seen the swirling waves, in their oncoming like innumerable herds of wild horses, hesitate at the impact, turn aside, and go racing by, scouring out a new channel, leaving the old bank bereft, thrown inland, no longer the margin of the stream.