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Updated: May 20, 2025
The prospect of his Aunt's arrival, the certainty that something more than he had thought had come out of his mountain sojourn, the fact that he was sure that he regretted Barbara Holton's coming, old Neb's arrival, and his raking up of ancient scores against the lowland maiden's father, his meeting with Joe Lorey and the latter's treatment of him, had wrought him to a pitch of mild excitement.
Again she made a survey of him, standing where he had been when he had loosed his hold of her, unwearied, smiling, and she looked with actual wonder. Good clothes and careful speech were not, of a necessity, the outward signs of weaklings, it appeared! Joe Lorey, in a dozen talks with her, had told her that they were.
"I've been hidin' it for years." He spoke pleadingly. "Look hyar. I've got everythin' that heart can wish. Joe Lorey, I'll save you from them men. I'll sw'ar I saw you leave the stable afore th' fire begun." He moved his eyes from one of the accusing faces to the other, terrified. "I'll make ye both rich if you'll never speak that name ag'in!" "Your weight in gold would make no differ!"
The man was furtive, apprehensive in his every movement, suspicion breeding. When Joe stepped out from his thicket boldly, to confront him, the ex-slave-dealer fell back, frightened. "Hello, sir," was Joe's laconic greeting. "Joe Lorey!" exclaimed Holton. "That's me," Joe boldly granted. He peered at him so closely that Holton shrank away from him, involuntarily.
What better fortune could he wish than to pit this mountain youth, whom, also, for a reason carried over from dark days in his past life, he hated, against the young man from the bluegrass whom he hated no less bitterly? "Go by that path, thar," said Lorey, suddenly, and pointing, as Holton started to return by the direct route he had followed as he came.
The thought seemed quite incredible and the worry of it quite absorbed her for a time and drove away forebodings about the possible hatred of Joe Lorey for Layson and his possible expression of resentment. She even ceased her wonderings about the footsteps which had gone down the road, that morning, and which, so far as she could see, had not come back again.
Holton shrank away from them in terror which he could not hide. His bravado was all gone. He was, no longer, the accuser, but, with the mention of that name, had changed places with Joe Lorey and become the fugitive, shrinking, alarmed. "'Sh! Don't speak that name!" he pleaded. He made no effort at denial. There was that in the girl's eyes which told him that her recognition had been absolute.
Her heart sank in her breast like lead. She knew perfectly whom Lorey meant. She knew as perfectly that Layson never had informed upon the moonshiner, but she also knew that Heaven itself could not, then, convince the man of that. "Who do you mean you'll git, Joe?" she faltered, hoping against hope that she was wrong in her suspicions. "You know well enough," he answered.
I want to see th' gal as lives up yander. Want to buy her land of her." Lorey, satisfied by this explanation that the stranger was not a government agent, as he had, at first suspected, relaxed his tense rigidity of muscles. From fear of revenuers his disturbed mind returned quickly to the bitterness of his resentment of what he thought Madge Brierly's infatuation for the young lowlander.
"They'll lay the crime on Lorey," he reflected, after he had laid his plan. "They'll hunt him down and lynch him and I shall be safe. Layson'll be ruined, he'll have to sell Woodlawn, and my gal'll be th' missus there, in spite of him. I've got to do it." Like a shadow of the night he hurried through the grounds until he reached the stable where Queen Bess was thought to be secure.
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