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Updated: June 13, 2025
"How did ye happen ter be hyar this time o' the night, ye limb o' Satan?" he cried. "Dunno," faltered poor Jim. The other man had returned too. "Waal, sir, ef that thar boy hed been a copper-head now, he'd hev bit us, sure!" "He mought do that yit," said Amos Brierwood, with grim significance. "He hev been thar all this time, 'kase he air tied thar, don't ye see? An' he hev eyes, an' he hev ears.
At Brierwood the Colonel, wrought to a high tension of excitement by the mysterious flood of Christmas prosperity, of which the latest manifestation had been a fresh newspaper dated the night before, surmounted by a cigar of no mean label, had been vainly searching for Uncle Noah, bewildered by the darky's odd vagaries which had culminated in the culprit's disappearance.
"Wal, we can crowd a good 'eal into two or three weeks, and I won't let you go to sleep in the daytime I'll promise you that." Hazletine produced a brierwood pipe and pressed some tobacco in the bowl. Although the motion of their ponies caused quite a brisk breeze, he lighted a match and communicated the flame to the tobacco without checking the speed of his animal.
"Air it your'n?" asked the woman wonderingly. "I jes' now fund it, an' I war tried ter know who had drapped it hyar." The officer, without a word, untied the knot which Amos Brierwood had made in one corner, while the Coggins looked on in open-mouthed amazement.
Pudfut, the Englishman, first in from Norway, where he had been sketching on board some lord's yacht he of the grizzly brown beard, brown ulster reaching to his toes, gray-checked steamer-cap and brierwood pipe an outfit which he never changed "slept in them," Marny insisted. "Me name's Pudfut," he began, holding out his hand to Marny. "I've got a letter in my clothes for ye from a chap in Paris."
At four o'clock Major Verney, who had been restrained from dashing over to Brierwood hours before only by the necessity of soothing the ruffled feelings of his irate mother after her long wait for a belated sleigh on the porch of the Cotesville church, blustered in with the aggrieved old lady upon his arm. "We've come to supper," announced the Major. "No, Dick," as the Colonel rose, "sit down.
What air ter hender?" The other man's face turned pale, and Jim thought that they were afraid he would tell all he had seen and heard. The manner of both had changed, too. They had a skulking, nervous way with them now in place of the coarse bravado that had characterized them hitherto. Amos Brierwood pondered for a few minutes. Then he sullenly demanded, "What's yer name?"
While Jim stood breathlessly, intently listening, Brierwood had twisted something into the folds of his comforter so dexterously that unless this were untied it would not fall; it was a silk handkerchief of a style never before seen in the mountains, and he had made a knot hard and fast in one corner. "Thar, now!" he exclaimed, holding up the fragment of knitted yarn, "I hev tore yer comforter.
He had no idea that his constant notice of it would stamp it in his memory, and that something would come of this fact. He was glad when the shadow ceased to writhe and twist upon the wall, and the man dropped his arm to his side again. "What's a-brewin', Amos?" asked the other, who had been watching Brierwood curiously.
The twilight of a Christmas Eve, gray with the portent of coming snow, crept slowly over the old plantation of Brierwood, softening the outlines of a decrepit house still rearing its roof in massive dignity and a tumbledown barn flanked by barren fields.
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