Читать книгу Oliver October - George Barr McCutcheon - Страница 10

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Mr. Sikes, taking no chance on having Baxter’s order vetoed by Serepta, rushed from the room. A moment later he returned, followed by two shivering women who stopped just inside the door and apologetically smirked upon the waiting group. One of them, evidently the leader, was a woman of middle-age—swarthy, keen-eyed, sardonic of expression. A thick red shawl covered her hair, drawn close under the chin by a brown, claw-like hand. She wore a man’s overcoat; the tips of a pair of heavy boots peeped out from beneath the bottom of her dirty yellow petticoat. Her companion, much younger and quite handsome in a bold, sullen way, also wore a scarlet shawl about her head; she was dressed very much after the pattern of her senior.

“Here we are,” announced Mr. Sikes, with a wave of his hand.

“Shut the door,” ordered Mrs. Grimes.

The host, with a nervous sort of geniality, beckoned to the strangers. “Better come down to the fire, Queen,” he said.

They did not move. The elder woman fixed a curious look upon Mr. Baxter.

“I am the queen of the gypsies, Mister, but how came you to know it?” she asked in a hoarse, not unmusical voice.

“Always best to be on the safe side,” said Baxter, with his jolliest laugh. “There are so blamed many gypsy queens running around loose these days that—”

The gypsy silenced him with an imperious gesture. “There is but one true queen of the gypsies. I am the true queen of all the Romanies. And you, Mister, are the father of a noble, handsome son—a prince.”

“Well, by gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Link in astonishment. “That does beat all!”

“Don’t tell me there’s nothing in fortune-telling,” said Mr. Baxter, cackling again. “Come up by the fire, Queen. Warm yourself. And you too, Miss.”

The two women, after a glance at each other, slowly advanced to the stove and held out their hands to the warmth. The younger of the two fastened her gaze upon Mrs. Sage. A covetous light gleamed in her black eyes as she took in the fur coat and the wondrous hat.

“Bring in a couple of chairs from the kitchen, Joe,” ordered the host. “Set down, everybody. Put on a little more coal, will you, Horace? How did you know about me, Queen?” He seemed to expand a little with his own rather vicarious importance.

The gypsy waited impressively until the chairs were produced.

“The stars brought me the news,” she said, and sat down, signaling her companion that it was now permissible for her to do the same. “They make no mistakes. I am the chosen mouthpiece of the stars. I speak only of the things they tell me.”

“Umph!” from Mr. Gooch.

The two women looked at him so piercingly that he turned away, conscious of a most uncomfortable feeling.

“The stars, Mister, witnessed the birth of your son a hundred thousand years ago—his birth and also his death,” said the “queen,” satisfied with the squelching of the scoffer. “They also looked down upon your own deathbed, Mister, a hundred thousand years ago.”

There was an awed silence while the company sought mentally for a solution to this tremendous and incomprehensible enigma.

“Look here, Ollie,” said Mr. Link, blatantly jocular; “if you’ve been dead as long as all that you ought to be buried. You stop in at my office in the morning.”

This remark properly was ignored by the gypsy queen. She paid no attention to the strained laugh that followed the undertaker’s sally. She sat hunched forward in the chair, her chin in her hands.

“The stars travel through space at the rate of a million miles a minute,” she said oracularly. “How long, Mister, would it take mortal man to travel a million miles?”

The question, addressed abruptly to Mr. Baxter, found him at a loss for an answer. All he could do was to shake his head helplessly.

“I see it is beyond you,” she went on. “So fast travel the stars that in one day, such as ours, they have put behind them a hundred thousand of the tiny things we call years.”

No one present was prepared to dispute the statement.

“Even as I speak to you now, Mister, my words are as ancient history to the stars. So! I lift my hand. The stars are a thousand years older than they were before I lifted it. Do you understand, Mister? Is it not clear to you?”

“Not very,” confessed Mr. Baxter, humbly.

“See. I snap my fingers. Not in scorn for your ignorance, but to illustrate. While I was snapping my fingers, some of the stars shot through a million miles of space, taking thousands of our years to do it.”

“Mathematically—” began Mr. Sage, but got no further. The gypsy proceeded, impressively:

“They have witnessed all that is to transpire on this earth of ours during the next thousand years or two.”

“By gosh—it sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Link. “I never thought of it in that way before.”

“Will you permit me to inquire, my good woman, what college—what great seat of learning—you attended?” inquired Mr. Sage ironically.

“College?” she inquired, a trifle blankly.

“You speak the language of a cultivated woman. You use good English. You have colossal figures on the tip of your tongue. You—”

“I speak many languages,” she broke in. “The language of the stars is older than any of them. There were stars in the East when the Savior was born. They were there when this world was made and peopled with ignorant men and women. They saw from afar the birth of your Savior a million years before he was—”

“My dear Brother Baxter,” cried the parson, “this is perfect nonsense. Have you the impudence, Madam, to imply that we mortals are so far behind the times as all this?”

“I know of nothing, Reverend Sir, that proves the fact more clearly than the institution you represent,” said the gypsy, with a rare smile.

“Goodness, what beautiful teeth!” murmured Mrs. Sage admiringly.

“The best I can say for you, Madam,” said Mr. Sage, returning the smile, “is that right or wrong, honest or dishonest, you are nobody’s fool.”

“I can see beyond the end of my nose,” rejoined the woman cryptically.

The parson laughed. “And so, according to your gospel, I am now treading the streets of the Celestial City, and have been doing so for a million years without knowing it?”

With the utmost seriousness the gypsy replied: “If you will cross my palm with a piece of silver, good Pastor, I may be able to state positively whether you are there—or in the other place.”

The parson’s wife clapped her hands. “Give her a quarter, Herbert,” she cried, mischievously. “It certainly is worth that much to find out whether we’re wasting our youth trying to—”

“Ahem! My dear Josephine! In the first place, I do not have to be told that I am going to heaven when I die. I live in faith. I have no doubt as to the future.”

At this point Mr. Baxter’s interest in the project got the better of his politeness.

“We’re wasting time. Let’s get down to business. Do you mean to say, Queen, that you can look at my hand and tell what’s ahead of my boy upstairs?”

“First, you must cross my palm with silver. It is a bitter night, Mister. I have come far through the storm to serve you. You are poor, but so am I. I have earned more than one piece of silver, but I will be content with what you may give.”

“I believe I’ll take a chance on it,” said Baxter, with a defiant glance at Mrs. Grimes and the supercilious Gooches.

Mrs. Grimes was deeply though secretly impressed by the words and manner of the gypsy. She nodded her head and Baxter brightened. Mr. Gooch, however, exclaimed:

“Don’t be a fool, Baxter. Money don’t grow on bushes.”

Young Mrs. Sage jumped up from her chair. “I’ve got an idea,” she cried briskly. “Suppose we all chip in a silver piece toward the fortune of Oliver October. It’s his birthday, so let’s start him off right. You pass the hat, Mr. Sikes. Chip in for me, Herbert. I left my purse on the piano.”

“I didn’t know you had a piano,” said Mrs. Grimes, pricking up her ears.

“Figure of speech,” said Mrs. Sage, airily. “If I had a piano I would have left my purse upon it if I had a purse.”

There was a jingling of small coins in several pockets. The swarthy faces of the two gypsies brightened. Horace Gooch glanced at his big watch—a silver one—and said sharply:

“Didn’t I tell you to get your things on, Ida? We’ve got a long, cold drive ahead of us.” Then, somewhat defiantly: “Besides, I haven’t got anything smaller than a silver dollar. No baby’s fortune is worth a dollar.”

“I guess the queen can change a dollar for you, Mr. Gooch,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Joe, if you have a spare quarter, put it in for me. I’ll hand it back to-morrow.”

Sikes picked up the parson’s stove-pipe hat and, fishing some coins out of his pocket, dropped two of them into the hollow depths of the “tile.”

“That’s for me and Serepty. Come on, Silas. Shell out.”

Link flipped a coin into the hat. “There’s a quarter. Now you can change that dollar for—er—for Ollie’s brother-in-law.”

“After all, it is a harmless experiment,” announced Mr. Sage, but dubiously, “and it may prove diverting. In any case, my dear, we will not miss the—er—the—the thirty-five cents.” As he dropped the coins into the hat, he leaned over and whispered in her ear: “There goes the jar of cold cream you were wanting, my dear.”

Oliver October’s parent was embarrassed. “It ain’t right for you folks to be squandering all this money on account of little Oliver October. You can’t afford it. ’Specially Horace.”

“What’s that?” snapped Mr. Gooch, reddening. “What do you think I am? A pauper?” With that he tossed a silver dollar into the hat. “That’s the kind of a sport I am.”

“Oh, Horace!” cried his wife, starting. “That was a dollar.”

“I know it was. Why?”

“Oh—nothing. Only—only you acted as if it was a dime.”

“How much you got, Joe?” inquired Silas.

“Two-ten. Put your money back in your pocket, Ollie. She ought to tell all our fortunes for two-ten.”

But Baxter, ignoring him, dropped a dollar into the hat, an act of vanity which drew from Mrs. Grimes a little squeak of dismay.

“Goodness, Oliver Baxter! The child’s got to have clothes.”

“How do you know it has to have clothes?” demanded Baxter. “Wait till the queen gets through telling what’s going to happen to him before you go to prophesying on your own account.”

“I wish I’d put you to bed when I started to awhile ago,” was her retort.

Mrs. Gooch, who had been a silent and disapproving witness to all this prodigality, piped up: “I was fool enough to have my fortune told at the county fair once. By a trained canary bird. For ten cents only.”

“You never told me about it, Ida,” said Mr. Gooch sourly.

Sikes turned the money over to Baxter. “Cross her palm with it, Ollie,” said he.

“What guarantee is there that we get our money’s worth?” demanded Mr. Gooch, crinkling his eyes a little as he listened to the jingle of the coins which Baxter shifted noisily from one hand to the other while Sikes was arranging the chairs in a semi-circle about the central figures.

The “queen” looked hard at the speaker. “We all come into the world by chance, Mister,” she said. “We exist by chance and we are destroyed by chance. The child’s future depends on chance. I can give no guarantee. Who shall say whether I speak truly or falsely until time has given its testimony?”

“A remarkably clever woman,” murmured Mr. Sage, as he seated himself.

“I’d hate to hear any bad news about little Oliver October,” said Baxter anxiously.

“You must accept the bad with the good, Mister. Our fortunes run over a road of many turnings, through many snares and pitfalls. Fate directs us. Each of us has a guiding star. We travel by the light it sheds. Your baby was born under his own star. His fate is known to that star.”

“Hold out your hand. I’ll say in advance that I don’t believe in fortune-telling, so if you tell me anything bad it won’t make any difference. Before you begin, I guess I’ll run upstairs and see if he is still all right.”

“You stay away from that baby, Oliver Baxter,” exclaimed Mrs. Grimes. “Like as not these gypsies carry all sorts of awful diseases around with ’em. Sit down, I say. I won’t have any strangers busting in and frightening that child.”

“Great Scott, Serepty! You don’t call me a stranger, do you?”

“He don’t know you from Adam,” was the stern reply.

“Or Eve, for that matter,” added Mrs. Sage, with a snicker.

“I do wish, Josephine, you would remember—”

“Sh! She’s ready to begin,” interrupted Baxter.

The company drew their chairs closer as the coins were dropped one by one into the gypsy’s palm. She deliberately drew up her thick skirt and slipped them into a pocket of her petticoat. Then she seized one of Baxter’s hands in her own and fixed him with her brilliant, searching eyes. Silence pervaded the room. Every eye was on the dark, impassive face of the fortune-teller. Presently, after a few strange passes with her free hand, she lowered her eyes and began to study the creases in the Baxter palm.

A particularly violent blast of wind roared and whistled about the corners of the house, rattling the windows in their frames and peppering the panes with a fusillade of sleet. The younger gypsy drew her shawl closer about her chin and slunk a little deeper into the chair.

“A tough night on horses,” said Mr. Link, and then cleared his throat hastily.

“Maybe you’d sooner be alone, Ollie,” said Mr. Sikes, considerately.

“I wouldn’t be left alone with her for anything, Joe.”

The gypsy began, in a deep, monotonous, rather awesome tone.

“I see a wonderful child. He is strong and sturdy. In the hand of his father the stars have laid their prophecy. It is very clear. This babe will grow up to be a fine—Ah, wait! Yes, a very remarkable man.”

Another long silence, broken sacrilegiously by Mr. Sikes.

“I could have told you that, Ollie, for nothing,” he said.

“Sh!”

“I can see this son of yours, Mister, as a leader of men. Great honor is in store for him, and great wealth.”

“They invariably say that,” said Mr. Sage, smiling.

“Sh!” hissed Baxter fiercely.

“He is in uniform. Of the military, I believe, although the vision is not yet entirely clear. I do not recognize the uniform.”

“Have you ever seen a general?” inquired Mr. Baxter, wistfully.

Mr. Link interposed. “I know what it is. Many’s the time that infant’s father has marched in a funeral procession wearing a Knights of Pythias uniform. Does the hat appear to have a long white plume on it, Queen?”

“There will be wars, Mister, bloody wars,” went on the gypsy, paying not the slightest attention to the obliging undertaker. “I see men in uniform following your son—many men, Mister, and all of them armed.”

“Sounds like the police to me,” observed Mrs. Sage.

“Do they catch him?” cried Mrs. Grimes breathlessly.

“He puts away the trappings of war,” continued the imperturbable seeress. “I see him as a successful man, at the head of great undertakings. He is still young. He has been out of college but a few years.”

“That will please his mother,” said Baxter, sniffling. “She has always wanted that boy to go to college.”

“Sh!” put in Mr. Sikes testily.

“Alas! He will have a great sorrow before he is ten. I can see death standing beside him. He will lose some one who is very dear to him.”

“Aha!” ejaculated Mr. Gooch, as if here was something to relish.

Mr. Baxter laughed shrilly but mirthlessly. “Look close, Queen,” he said. “I bet it’s me he’s going to lose.”

“Nay. Some one nearer to him than his father.”

“Stop!” said he soberly, trying to withdraw his hand. “I don’t want to hear any more. If you mean his—his mother, why, you’ll have to stop.”

Some coaxing and a little ridicule on the part of the spectators decided Baxter. He laughed and, edging forward on his chair, ordered the gypsy to continue.

“Let me go back a little,” she droned. “The vision is clearer. He will come out of college at the top of his class, with great honors. Then, soon after, will come the wars. He will fight in foreign lands.”

“That bears out what I’ve claimed for years,” said Mr. Link. “We’ve got to lick England again.”

“Your son will have many narrow escapes, Mister, but he will come home to his mother, safe and sound.”

“I thought you said she was going to die before he was ten,” said Mr. Gooch.

Covert glances passed between the two gypsies, the younger now being wide awake. The fortune-teller bent low over the Baxter palm and studied it more carefully.

“I—I seem to see a strange woman,” she muttered. “Perhaps it is his step-mother. It is possible that you will marry again, Mister.”

“You’re off your base there, Queen,” said Mr. Baxter firmly. “It ain’t possible.”

“This is all humbug, Brother Baxter.”

“A great deal more is being revealed to me by the light of the star, Mister,” urged the gypsy, now eager to give good measure. “Shall I go on?”

“After what you said about me being likely to get married again, all I got to say is that I don’t believe a derned word of anything you’ve told me. That boy’s never going to have a step-mother unless he has a step-father first.”

“You feel the same way about step-mothers that I do about brother-in-laws,” put in Mr. Sikes.

“Go on, Queen,” commanded Mr. Baxter.

“I see a great white house and a building with a huge dome upon it. Your son will sit in the halls of state, in the councils of his land. Ah, the vision grows dim again. It may mean that he will decline the greatest honor the people of this land could confer upon him.”

“Oh, dear,” gulped Mrs. Grimes. “You don’t mean to say he will refuse to be President?”

“It’s more likely he’ll be running on the Republican ticket,” said Mr. Gooch, grinning at Mr. Link.

“Sh! How old is little Oliver by this time, Queen?” inquired Baxter. “I mean how far have you got him by now?”

“He is nearing thirty. Rich, respected and admired. He will have many affairs of the heart. I see two dark women and—one, two—yes, three fair women.”

Mrs. Sage sighed. “At last it begins to look like real trouble.”

“That would seem to show that he’s going to be a purty good-looking sort of a feller, wouldn’t it?” said Baxter, proudly.

“He will grow up to be the image of his father, Mister.”

“Now she’s telling you the unpleasant things you were dreading, Oliver,” said Gooch.

The gypsy leaned back in her chair, spreading her hands in a gesture of finality.

“I see no more,” she said. “The light of the star has faded out. So! Are you not pleased?”

“Is that all? Well, all I got to say is that you got a good deal of money for telling me something that I’ve been dreaming about for I don’t know how long.”

Mrs. Gooch sniffed. “She’s just like all the rest of these thieving gypsies. They’re all frauds and liars. Telling fortunes and stealing children is all they know how to do. If I had my way, they’d all be locked up.”

The two gypsies leaned forward, their hands close to the stove, their heads almost touching. There was nothing in their actions or manner to indicate that they heard the foregoing remarks. Nevertheless, they scowled unseen and there was evil in their black eyes.

“Anybody could have told you all that she did, Oliver,” complained Mrs. Grimes, “but that wouldn’t make it true, would it? Three dollars and ten cents for all that rubbish!”

“And they’ll be robbing your hen roost before morning, Baxter,” said Mr. Gooch.

“Well,” mused Baxter, “the only really unpleasant thing that’s going to happen to Oliver October, far as I can make out, is that he’s going to look exactly like me. That is purty rough, ain’t it, Mrs. Sage?”

“At any rate,” said she, “he will have the satisfaction of being unmistakably recognized as a wise son.”

The gypsies were preparing to depart. Their shifty eyes wandered over the heads of the company, taking in the meager contents of the room. There was a pleased leer on the lips of the younger of the two. Mr. Baxter arose.

“Taking it by and large, Queen,” he said, “I guess you took us all in purty neatly. I ain’t blaming you. It’s your business to pick out the easiest kind of fools and then soak it to ’em.”

The “queen” drew herself erect and gave him a look that would have done credit to the most regal personage in the world.

“Would you offer insult to the queen of the gypsies?” she demanded coldly.

“It ain’t insulting you, is it, to call ourselves fools?”

For answer, outraged royalty reached into her pocket and drew out the silver.

“I could throw your accursed silver into your face,” she almost shouted. As she drew back her arm as if to carry out the threat, her wrist was seized by her companion, who whispered fiercely in her ear. “No, no!” the “queen” answered, “I will not do as you say, Magda. I will not be cruel. Let the fool be happy while he may. I have been kind to him. He jeers at me because I have stopped when I might have gone on and told him the dreadful things—”

“Tell him!” cried the other. “Tell him everything.”

“Open the door, Joe!” commanded Baxter. “Get out, both of you.”

The “queen” turned on him furiously. “Stay! I am about to tell you all that I saw in the hand of that baby’s father.” Her eyes were hard and cruel, her voice raised in anger. “You scoff at me. For that you shall have the truth. All that I have told you will come true. But I did not tell you of the end that I saw for him. Hark ye! This son of yours will go to the gallows. He will swing from the end of a rope.” She was now speaking in a high shrill voice; her hearers sat open-mouthed, as if under a spell that could not be shaken off. “It is all as plain as the noonday sun. He will never reach the age of thirty. All good fortune will desert him in the last year of his life. The very first vision I had when I took your hand was the sight of a young man swinging in the air with a rope around his neck. A solemn group of men look on. They watch him swing to and fro. He jerks and writhes and then at last is still. That is all. That is the end. I have spoken the truth. You forced me to do so. I go. Come, Magda!”

They were nearing the door before the silence caused by this staggering revelation was shattered by Mr. Sikes, who was the first to recover from the momentary paralysis that had gripped the entire company. The burly feed store proprietor, superstitious but far from sentimental, sprang forward and intercepted the two women.

“Hold on, there! I don’t believe a damn’ word of it—and neither does Mr. Baxter, no matter if he does look white about the gills. You’re sore, and you’re saying all this for spite.”

The queen lifted her chin haughtily. “You will see,” she proclaimed. “Wait till the end of his twenty-ninth year before you say it is spite.”

“Say,” broke in Mr. Link shrewdly, “he’s got to commit murder before they can hang him, ain’t he?”

“I have not said that he would be a murderer,” was the reply, but not until after she had taken the time to deliberately button her coat and readjust her headgear.

“Did you not say you saw him swinging to and fro at the end of a rope?” demanded Silas, accusingly.

“Yes—I—I—that is what I said,” she stammered, and sent a malevolent, challenging look at the smiling churchman.

“The woman is a fraud,” said the latter, shrugging his shoulders. “Cheer up, Brother Baxter. No such fate awaits your son.”

“Well, what I was about to say,” went on Mr. Link, “is this. All we got to do is to bring that boy up not to commit murder. We simply got to educate him so’s he won’t ever think of doing anything like that. Learn him to hold his temper down. Soon as he’s old enough to understand, we’ll begin talking to him about the—er—wages of sin, and so forth. That’ll fix it all right, Ollie. So don’t you believe a derned word she said to you.”

But Mr. Baxter was not so much dismayed as he was dejected. He stared bleakly before him. “The trouble is,” said he, shaking his head mournfully, “there’s a lot of it I want to believe. And if I believe any of it, I’ve got to believe all of it. So what’s the sense of little Oliver being one of the grandest men in the United States if he’s got to be hung before the United States finds it out? Here! Where are you going, Serepty? Don’t leave me.”

“I am going out to get a kettle of boiling water and then I’m going to make that woman wish she’d stayed out where it’s cold. The idea of that poor little innocent baby being a bloodthirsty murderer! If you’re here when I get back, I’ll scald you—”

The gypsy made haste to intercept the bristling Serepta.

“He will not be guilty of the crime for which he is to suffer,” was her sententious conclusion. “Have I not said he would grow up to be a noble and righteous man? He will never do evil. He will be unjustly accused of slaying a fellow man. He will die on the gallows an innocent victim of the law. That is all. I have spoken. I have told you his fate as the stars have revealed it to me. You may believe me or not, as you like. Hold! You need not bother, Mister. Magda will open the door.”

It was a speechless, unsmiling group that watched the vagabond women pass from the room. No one spoke until the front door closed with a bang. The crunching of snow on the porch followed, and then for a brief space, the loud ticking of the clock on the shelf. The sophisticated Mrs. Sage was bereft of all inclination to banter; she was wide-eyed and solemn. Even her husband was impressed; as for Baxter and the others one might have been justified in suspecting that they were already witnessing the horrible execution of the infant Oliver.

A wild, prolonged shriek of the wind, yowling up from the black stretches of Death Swamp, caused more than one person in the room to shudder. The humane Mr. Link closed his eyes but opened them immediately, and said, with less conviction however than on former occasions:

“It’s a tough night for horses.”

Mr. Sikes bethought himself to poke up the fire. He did it with such vigor that every one was grateful to him; the prodigious noise and clatter he was making relieved the tension.

Baxter screwed his face up into a wry grin, but for once forebore cackling. He drew a singularly boisterous and unanimous laugh by remarking dryly:

“I wish we had a canary bird here, Ida, to cheer us up a bit.”

“Keep that blanket up close around your neck and shoulders, Oliver Baxter,” ordered Serepta Grimes briskly. “You’ll be having croup if you ain’t careful. Mrs. Gooch, you and your husband can sleep in the spare room to-night. Mr. Baxter will take the back bedroom over the kitchen. It’s warmer than any other room in the house. Good night, everybody. I’ll go up the back way with the warm blanket for Oliver October.”

With her departure, Mr. Baxter seemed suddenly to realize that something was expected of him as host.

“Sit down, everybody,” he invited, and that was the extent of his hospitality. He lapsed into a brooding silence, pulling feebly at the drooping ends of his mustache. His mood was contagious. The company, one and all, appeared to be thinking profoundly. At last the Reverend Sage spoke.

“There’s nothing in it—absolutely nothing.”

Mrs. Sage came out of a dark reverie to inquire blandly of Mrs. Gooch if she was intending to spend the night.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Baxter’s sister. “I’ve had my things on and off three times.”

Mr. Link pondered aloud. “If little Oliver grows up to be as wise as Solomon, as she seems to think, I’ll bet my last cent he’ll be able to get around any law that ever was made.”

Suddenly Baxter startled them all by slapping his leg resoundingly. His face was beaming.

“By ginger, I’ve thought of a way to upset that doggoned prophecy. I’ll wait till little Oliver is purty well grown up and then I’ll up and move to a state where they don’t have capital punishment. Gosh! I wish I’d thought of that before she got away. It would have taken a lot of wind out of her sails, wouldn’t it?”

Mr. Gooch put a dampener on this. “I don’t see how that would help any if a mob took him out of jail and lynched him. They say lynching is getting worse all the time in this part of the country.”

Whereupon Mr. Sikes arose and said something under his breath, adding an instant later:

“Don’t let me hear anything about Solomon being so dodgasted wise. Look at all the brother-in-laws he must have taken unto himself—and with his eyes open, too.”