"Whut is it?" he called. "And whut do you want? Speak out peartly!"
[Illustration: HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.--_Page 197._]
The answer came through the thick planking thinly, in a sort of gasping whine that ended in a chattering cough; but even after Shem's ear caught the words, and even after he recognized the changed but still familiar cadence of the voice, he abated none of his caution. Carefully he unbolted the door, and, drawing it inch by inch slowly ajar, he reached out, exposing only his hand and arm, and drew bodily inside the shell of a man that was fallen, huddled up, against the log door jamb. He dropped the wooden crossbar back into its sockets before he looked a second time at the intruder, who had crawled across the floor and now lay before the wide mouth of the hearth in a choking spell. Shem Dugmore made no move until the fit was over and the sufferer lay quiet.
"How did you git out, Anse?" were the first words he spoke.
The consumptive rolled his head weakly from side to side and swallowed desperately. "Pardoned out--in writin'--yistiddy."
"Yes,"--the words came very slowly--"my lungs give out on me--and my eyes. But--but I got here."
"You come jist in time," said his cousin; "this time tomorrer and you wouldn't a' never found me here. I'd 'a' been gone."
"Well," said Shem slowly, "after you was sent away it seemed like them Tranthams got the upper hand complete. All of our side whut ain't dead--and that's powerful few--is moved off out of the mountings to Winchester, down in the settlemints. I'm 'bout the last, and I'm a-purposin' to slip out tomorrer night while the Tranthams is at their Christmas rackets--they'd layway me too ef----"
"I thought maybe you'd heered tell about that whilst you was down yon," said Shem in a dulled wonder. "The fall after you was took away yore woman she went over to the Tranthams. Yes, sir; she took up with the head devil of 'em all--old Wyatt Trantham hisself--and she went to live at his house up on the Yaller Banks."
The ex-convict was struggling to his knees. His groping skeletons of hands were right in the hot ashes. The heat cooked the moisture from his sodden garments in little films of vapor and filled the cabin with the reek of the prison dye.