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The official impatience of the delay was expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but throughout the interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face, sat motionless in his saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt presentment of indifference, while, perched behind him, Meddy was continually busy in readjusting her skirts or shawl or a small bundle that presumably contained her rustic finery, but which, to a close approach, would have disclosed the sulphurous odor of gunpowder.
He turned toward her jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even ter meddle with other folkses' mourning what they got through with a hunderd year' ago tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in the tree."
He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood it's rotted a deal sence then." "Who was the man?" asked Seymour. "Nobody knows, nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o' tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock rifle he hed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago.
Sometimes she stealthily supplied Billy with new garters, or fastened the buttons on his blue overalls, or even gave him a spoonful of "meddy" out of a big bottle, at the mere sight of which Ellen shuddered sympathetically; a dose which was always followed by two marshmallows, out of a tin box, by way of consolation.
He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the sumac-bushes heralded an approach. "That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war lackin'."
"What's her name Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity. "Naw; Meddy short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."
Meddy, "the eldest fambly," had been guide, philosopher, and friend to the swarm of youngsters, and even now, in the interests of peace and space and hearing, was seeking to herd them into an adjoining room, when a sudden stentorian hail from without rang through the splashing of the rain from the eaves, the crash of thunder among the "balds" of the mountains, with its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging of the wind.
Oh, Meddy is plumb comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of that thar man what war growed up in a tree." The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural perversion of the legend.
He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin. "A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder. "Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer assented easily.
"Toff meddy," she gurgled, looking up at the shelf where the bottle was kept. "Tatleen want toff meddy." "It's all gone, Kathleen," her mother said soothingly. "No," said Kathleen, shaking her head and pointing up at the bottle. "Mercy sakes! It's full!" cried Mrs. Mullarkey. "I could have sworn I emptied it this morning."
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