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It is fair, however, to remember that Robespierre's enemies had command of his historic reputation at its source, and this is always a great advantage for faction, if not for truth. So Robespierre's voice and person may have been maligned, just as Aristophanes may have been a calumniator when he accused Cleon of having an intolerably loud voice and smelling of the tanyard.
And he pushed past the trembling Tim, and took his way briskly into the tanyard. There was a vague murmur in the group as he approached, and Nate Griggs came out from its midst, nodding his head threateningly. His hat, thrust far back on his sandy hair, left in bold relief his long, thin face with its small eyes, which seemed now so close together that his glance had the effect of a squint.
We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes.
He felt eager, strong, capable. The spirit of progress was upon him. The tanyard lay in the midst of a forest so dense that, except at the verge of the clearing, it showed hardly a trace of its gradual despoliation by the industry that nestled in its heart like a worm in the bud.
He had fashioned a corn-stalk fiddle that instrument so dear to rural children! and he had been sawing away on it to his own satisfaction and Tennessee's unbounded admiration for the last half-hour. He had forgotten that pursuing conscience till it seized upon him again in the tanyard. "Oh, Birt," he quavered out, suddenly, "I hain't laid eyes on Nate."
Nevertheless, this bargain was annually struck. The poverty-stricken widow always congratulated herself upon its conclusion, and it never occurred to her that the amount of work that Birt did in the tanyard was a disproportionately large return for the few days that the tanner's mule ploughed their little fields.
He had fixed upon the third Sunday in August for the great trial, for the Monday following was a civic holiday, the anniversary of the founding of the city. The double event would give him abundant time in which to make a reconnoissance of his enemy's position and then return to Croye to resume his position in Messer Hugolin's tanyard.
He accepted with more haste than was seemly, and at once asked for the deedie in the small boy's pocket. Rufe, however, refused to part from the chick of his adoption, and presently Tim, with the gun on his shoulder, left the tanyard in company with Rufe, to look over the brood of game chicks, and make a selection from among them. Birt hardly noticed what they did or said.
He worked on doggedly, scheming all the time to get off from the tanyard, and wondering again and again why Nate had gone, and where, and when he would return. One day a gray day it was and threatening rain as he came suddenly out of the shed, he saw a boy at the bars. It was Nate Griggs! No; only for a moment he thought this was Nate.
When he entered the tanyard no one was there except Jube Perkins and Andy Byers the tanner, lounging as usual on the wood-pile, and the workman, with scarcely less the aspect of idleness, dawdlingly scraping a hide on the wooden horse. Birt discerned a portent in the unwonted solemnity of their faces, and his heart sank.
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