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He gave it as his solemn opinion that the master was mighty peart, and they would be beat anyhow some way, but he would lick the master fer two cents ef he warn't so slim that he'd feel like he was fighting a baby. And all that day things looked black. Ralph's countenance was cold and hard as stone, and Shocky trembled where he sat. Betsey Short tittered rather more than usual.
"They're coming," said Shocky to Ralph, "they're coming. Pete Jones is a-going to bind me out for a hundred years. I wish Hanner would hold me so's he couldn't. God's forgot all about us here in Flat Creek, and there's nobody to help it." And he shivered at every sudden sound. He was never free from this delirious fright except when the master held him tight in his arms.
It was now daylight, and finding, after he had mounted, that Shocky continued to shiver, he put the roan to his best speed for the rest of the way, trotting up and down the slippery hills, and galloping away on the level ground. How bravely the roan laid himself to his work, making the fence-corners fly past in a long procession!
The snow had gradually ceased to fall, and was eddying round the house, when Ralph dismounted from his foaming horse, and, carrying the still form of Shocky as reverently as though it had been something heavenly, knocked at Miss Nancy Sawyer's door.
From the topmost hair of his shocky head to the nethermost sole of his tough little feet, Bootsey Biggs was a Boy. Bootsey was on his way to business. He had come to his tenement home in Cherry Street, just below Franklin Square, to partake of his noonday meal.
When one is wretched, there is a pleasure in being entirely wretched. Ralph felt that he must have committed some unknown crime, and that some Nemesis was following him. Was Hannah deceitful? At least, if she were not, he felt sure that he could supplant Bud. But what right had he to supplant Bud? "Did you hear the news?" cried Shocky, running out to meet him.
"And I am the left wing, pretty good at giving advice, but very slender in a fight." "To be sure," said the old man. "And Shocky and Miss Martha and Hannah good aids, but nothing in a battle." "To be sure," said the basket-maker, a little doubtfully. "Now let's look at the arms and accouterments, I think you call them. Well, this old musket has been loaded " "This ten year," said the old lady.
It was the same old struggle between Doubt and Faith. And when Ralph looked up, Shocky had departed. In the next hour Ralph fought the old battle of Armageddon. I shall not describe it. You will fight it in your own way. No two alike. The important thing is the End.
Ralph was not slow to accept the relief offered by the hospitable justice of the peace, whose principal business seemed to be the adjustment of the pieces of which he was composed. And as Shocky traveled the same road, Ralph took advantage of the opportunity to talk with him. The master could not dismiss Hannah wholly from his mind.
And so Shocky, with his eyes looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph's presence, told over the thoughts that he had often talked over to the fence-rails and the trees. "It was real good in Mr. Pearson to take me, wasn't it? Else I'd a been bound out tell I was twenty-one, maybe, to some mean man like Ole Means. And I a'n't but seven.
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