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Updated: May 20, 2025
The mail carrier, the postmaster and Sim's friend looked at one another as these details went forward. "Well," said Pop Bentley, shrugging his bent shoulders, "if you would go away and leave a woman alone in a place like that " "What do you mean?" said Sim Gage suddenly. "Why, that woman ain't there no more, you fool. She's gone!" "Gone? What do you mean?"
'Bad yins, was Sim's emphatic answer. All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed. All day Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure both of snuff and of words, continued to debate the position.
Sim was heavily in debt, and this preyed on his mind. He had always been a grewsome body, sustaining none of the traditions of his craft for perky gossip. Hence he was no favorite in Wythburn, where few or none visited him. Latterly Sim's troubles seemed to drive him from his home for long walks in the night.
The ceremony was repeated; a flare of color rose in Berry's pallid countenance, Sim's portion apparently evaporated from the glass. The whiskey made no visible impression on Gordon Makimmon. The jug was circulated again, and again. All at once Rutherford became drunk. He rose swaying, attempted to articulate, and fell, half in a stall.
Sim's weariness lightened. His blood ran quicker; he remembered that the cow, his child's one hope, was there before him. He found himself next his cousin Wat, who chewed curses in his great beard. When they topped the rig they saw a quarter of a mile below them the men they sought. The cattle were driven in the centre, with horsemen in front and rear and flankers on the braeside.
I found an unoccupied camp chair one of Sim's, which he rented for funerals and carried it to a dark spot in the shrubbery near the border of the parsonage lawn and not far from the gate. There I seated myself, lit a cigar and smoked in solitude. Elnathan Mullet, evidently considering his labors as door-keeper over, was counting his takings by lantern light.
Then he paused, and stood a yard or two behind Sim, whose eyes were still averted. "I was told you had made your habitation on the hillside; a fitting home, no doubt, for one unfit to house with his fellows." Sim's hand trembled violently, and he set the bowl of milk on the floor beside him. Rotha was standing a yard or two apart, her breast heaving. "Have you left it for good, pray?"
It is Sim's hope and dream that sometime the annual receipts of the Homeburg post-office will just miss being enough to bring a raise in salary. Then Sim will bring it to Flint's attention that he would have bought his ten dollars' worth of stamps that year at home, if Flint hadn't advertised his lock box for rent when he neglected the quarterly dues.
The day was bitterly cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff. It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead.
Sim looked piteously sad and sorrowful; he glanced wistfully at the paper bag, and seemed to begrudge every moment of delay. At the tree, I took out the contents of the bag, and spread them on the log. Sim's eyes dilated till they were like a pair of saucers, and an expression of intense satisfaction lighted up his dull features. "Go in, Sim," said I, as soon as I had spread the table for him.
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