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She had terrible reason to fear, and felt as never before that she had brought this horrid situation upon herself by joining and rejoining the prophet's following. She had no hope now that Smith would relent. Beyond the city, eastward toward the sun-rising, lay the home of Ephraim's friendship, whither in the morning she had thought to bend her steps.
Naow you keep mum, ur I'll take this handkerchief off my eyes, spit on my hands, an' sail right into you, by thunder!" Then Ephraim began once more: "Yankee Dewdle came to taown 'Long with " The exasperated lieutenant snatched the handkerchief from Ephraim's eyes, almost bursting with rage. "If you don't quit this howling, I'll lodge you in the guardhouse!" he declared.
The air had grown sultry, but the guards kept awake and regularly relieved one another. It was difficult to elude their attention; yet close by Ephraim's couch, which his uncle, for greater comfort, had helped him make on the side of a gently sloping hill, a narrow ravine ran down to the valley. White veins of gypsum and glittering mica sparkled in the moonlight along its bare edges.
"You thought I cared for Miss Keith?" Ephraim's tone was a stronger negative than any words could have been. "Yes, I cared for her as your friend, and as a woman in trouble, and a woman of fine character: but if you fancied I wished to make her my wife, you were never more mistaken. No, Cary; I fixed on somebody else for that, a long while ago before I ever saw Miss Keith.
Katy exclaimed, when Esther reported the message, and with her mind full of possible news from Wilford, she ran hastily down the basement stairs, and with a loud scream of joy threw herself into Uncle Ephraim's arms, an act which so astonished Phillips that she dropped the dish of soup she was preparing for the dinner table, the greasy liquid bespattering Katy's dress, and bringing her to a sense of where she was, and that she should not be there.
As Hosea puts it in figurative fashion, Ephraim's discovery of his 'sickness' sent him in the vain quest for help to the apparent source of the 'sickness, that is to Assyria, whose king in the text is described by a name which is not his real name, but is a significant epithet, as the margin puts it, 'a king that should contend'; and who, of course, was not able to heal nor to cure the wounds which he had inflicted.
He noticed Aunt Betsy's oddities, it is true, and noticed Uncle Ephraim's grammar, too; but the sight of Helen sitting there, with so much dignity and self-respect, made him look beyond all else, straight into her open face and clear brown eyes, where there was nothing obnoxious or distasteful.
She and the doctor's wife ate the remainder of poor Ephraim's pie. The two women stayed next day and assisted in preparations for the funeral. Deborah seemed to have no thought for any of her household duties. She stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and her praying voice could be heard at intervals.
Absolute silence followed this announcement, then Samson's great voice started the wild "Hurrahs" which made the wide valley ring. The cheers were long and lusty, but when they subsided at last, Mrs. Trent bade her daughter finish the tale. "It wasn't a little, but a long way up the canyon; yet I was so eager to right Ephraim's wrong that I didn't feel afraid, though I never have liked Ferd.
This was in the afternoon and was all forgotten now, when with her Sunday clothes she never would have worn in that jam but for the great occasion, Aunt Betsy elbowed her way up the middle aisle, her face wearing a very important and knowing look, especially when Uncle Ephraim's tall figure bent for a moment under the hemlock boughs, and then disappeared in the little vestry room where he held a private consultation with the rector.
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