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I always took the money out and tied it in a canvas sack and hid it. A body would never think of lookin' where I hid that money." "Where did you hide it?" inquired aunt Corinne. The toll-woman rose up and went to collect from a carriage at the door. The merry face of a girl in the carriage peeped through the house, and some pleasant jokes were exchanged.
"You don't live here by yourself, do you?" inquired Grandma Padgett as the tea and the meal in common warmed an acquaintance which the fact of their being from one State had readily begun. "Since father died I have," replied the toll-woman. "Father moved in here when about everything else failed him, and he'd lost ambition, and laws! now I am used to it.
"I was that scared for a minute," resumed the toll-woman, "that I hadn't any strength. The middle door never is locked. I leave it on the latch like, so I can hear wheels better. What to do I didn't know, but a body thinks fast at such times. First thing I knew I was on the back doorstep, hookin' the door on the outside.
"And did they get in?" exclaimed Robert Day's aunt. "I don't like to think about it yet," remarked the toll-woman, cooling her tea and intent on enjoying her own story. "'Twasn't so very long ago, either. First comes word from this direction that a toll-gate keeper and his wife was tied and robbed at the dead o' night.
"They're a desp'rate, evil set," said the toll-woman sternly. "Why, I could tell things that would make your hair all stand on end, about robberies I've known." Aunt Corinne felt a warning stir in her scalp-lock. But her nephew began to desire permanent encampment in the neighborhood of this toll-gate.
If I run to either side, there were the men, and if I took toward the pig-pen they'd see me. And they'd be comin' around and 'd ketch me where I was." "What did you do?" exclaimed aunt Corinne, preserving a rigid attitude. The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.
"It ain't fit to tell," resumed the toll-woman, "what awful language them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole weight, of dirt and sod out of the top.
She thought the old lady would like a cup of strong tea, and her dinner was just ready, and it did get lonesome eating by a body's self day after day. The Padgetts added their store to the square table set in a back room, and the toll-woman poured her steaming tea into cups covered with flower sprigs. Everything about her was neat and compact as a ship's cabin.
Robber-stories which his grandmother not only allowed recited, but drank in with her tea, were luxuries of the road not to be left behind. "Tell some of them," he urged. "I'll tell you about their comin' here," said the toll-woman. "'Twas soon after father's death. They must known there was a lone woman here, and calculated on findin' it an easy job.
"O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight," replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. "Folks haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard," she added, laughing. "They came from miles around to look into it and see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose."
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