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And with that saying she snatched her bucket and was gone before he could find a word wherewith to match it. Three days after the episode at the barrel-spring, Tom went afield again, this time to gather plunging courage for the confession to his mother a thing which, after so many postponements, could be put off no longer. It was more instinct than purpose that led him to avoid the mountain.
They reached the great rock sheltering the barrel-spring before the shower broke in earnest, and Tom led the way to the right. Half-way up its southern face the big boulder held a water-worn cavity, round, and deeply hollowed, and carpeted with cedar needles. Tom climbed in first and gave her a hand from the mouth of the little cavern.
Rumor in Gordonia had it that Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom had been shy about making inquiries. For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring under the cliff face of the great rock.
For now the sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done what he had been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that how the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to strike back at those who had laughed at him.
I might' nigh b'lieve he had his suspicions, too. He let on like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy." "He did? Then Farley was one of the three men who saw us up yonder at the barrel-spring?" "Yes; and I was another one of 'em. I was right hot at you that mornin'; I shore was." "Well, who else knows about it?"
His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson's past, and to identify, if possible, one or more of the three men who, in January of the year 1890, had inspected and repaired the pipe-line running from the coke-yard tank up to the barrel-spring on high Lebanon.
"I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down and keep those fellows away from this side of things." But it was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an indistinct murmur of voices testified.
Then three men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind Tom, trembling, shaking with terror. "Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted. "Lookee there!" He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which drained the barrel-spring.
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