elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I
examined; and found he had turned off the high road somewhere beyond the
lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here."
"Well," said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly.
"Well," said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an accustomed martyr,
"mebbe I'm a God-forsaken idiot, but I reckon he DID come yer. And mebbe
I'm that much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated
you'ld know it without tellin'."
With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the quick blood rush
to her cheeks, although she knew not why. But they were apparently
satisfied with her ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more
gloomily:--
"Then if he wasn't hidin' here beknownst to you, he must have changed
his mind agin and got away by the embarcadero. The only thing wantin' to
prove that idea is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the
hoss. And thar's one more idea, and ez that can't be proved," continued
Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, "mebbe it's accordin' to God's
laws."
Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been and still was, Mrs.
Tucker felt a vague chill creep over her that seemed to be the result of
his manner more than his words. "And that idea is . . . ?" she suggested
with pale lips.
"It's this! Fust, I don't say it means much to anybody but me. I've
heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them
for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o'
God. The idea is then--that--Spencer Tucker--WAS DROWNDED in that boat;
the idea is"--his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper--"that it
was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out
of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine--no ears
heard him but mine. I reckon it weren't intended it should." He paused,
and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes. "The pie, you'll say, is
agin it," he continued in the same tone of voice,--"the whiskey is agin
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