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Delano stood in front of the crowd. He had walked forward, seeing no one on his way. "Hoddy Hoddy has gone, boys!" Then quickly, silently, the three hundred men arose and stood. After a time they heard Delano say: "Sit down, boys." He waited till they were seated. "There's a lot that I might tell, men terrible things that I won't tell, for it's all over.
For every Eden, there will be a serpent; for every sheepfold, there will be a wolf." "What's the matter, Ruth?" asked Spurlock, anxiously. "It has been ... rather a hard day, Hoddy," Ruth answered. She was wan and white. So, after the dinner was over, Spurlock took her home; and worked far into the night. The general office was an extension of the west wing of the McClintock bungalow.
Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow books; dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. There were no neighbours, except the Hansons up the hill.
Kenyon, the reporter, went over to the house on the Square and found there another old fellow that old Hoddy chummed some with, and who knew all the circumstances. "It seems Hoddy had an invalid old sister and they hadn't any money except this pension. How the two old souls got along no one will never know. But she died awhile ago, and that put Hoddy into a lot more debt.
Still his brain refused to assimilate the news or to deduce the tremendous importance of it. "You are Ruth?" "Yes," said Ruth, stirred by anger and bitterness and astonishment. This, then, was the woman from whom Hoddy would not have accepted a cup of water. "Come here," said the petticoated tyrant. Ruth obeyed, not willingly, but because there was something hypnotic in the authoritative tone.
It might have been the moon, or the phosphorescence of the broken water, or it might have been his abysmal loneliness; but suddenly he caught her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. "Oh!" she gasped. "I did not know ... that it was ... like that!" She stepped back; but as his hands fell she caught and held them tightly. "Please, Hoddy, always tell me when do I things wrong.
It was twenty minutes to five o'clock, when an excited negro, panting and perspiring, rushed up to the back door of Sheriff Campbell's dwelling, which stood at a little distance from the jail and somewhat farther than the latter building from the court-house. A turbaned colored woman came to the door in response to the negro's knock. "Hoddy, Sis' Nance." "Hoddy, Brer Sam."
Dey said 'Hoddy, en Mars Dugal' ax 'im ter hab a seegyar; en atter dey run on awhile 'bout de craps en de weather, Mars Dugal' ax 'im, sorter keerless, like ez ef he des thought of it, "'How you like de nigger I sole you las' spring? "Henry's marster shuck his head en knock de ashes off'n his seegyar. "'Spec' I made a bad bahgin when I bought dat nigger.
The thought of you, wandering from pillar to post, believing yourself hunted it tore my old heart to pieces! For I knew you. You would suffer the torments of the damned for what you had done. So I set out to find you, even if it cost ten times sixteen thousand. My poor Hoddy! I had to talk harshly, or break down and have hysterics. I've come to take you back home. Don't you understand?
"But I'm used to that, Hoddy," she said, eagerly. "I'd rather you went over the last four chapters, which I haven't polished yet. You know what's what. Slash and cut as much as you please. I'll knock off at tea. By-by." The desperate eagerness to go with him and she dared not voice it! She watched him until McClintock joined him and the two made off toward the south. She turned back into the hall.
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