As he leaped over into the highway, a man carrying a squirrel gun stepped from behind a tree.
"I was allowin' you'd done forgot," said the man, yawning sleepily.
"I never forget," was the short rejoinder. Then: "Come with me, and you shall hear with your own ears, since you won't take my word for it. Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair."
If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it, possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the tired brain to grapple with first.
For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness, stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone together.
She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the fever fires in his.
"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother."
"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his head. "What happened to me?"
"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as you were coming home. One of them struck you."
The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his assailants and guessed the identity of the other.
"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It was the least you could do, since your--"
She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him.
"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same colorless tone.
"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that. But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?"