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After making good Dic's loss of twenty-six hundred dollars, which sum, you may remember, went to Bays, Little had remaining in his strong-box notes to the amount of two thousand dollars, which, together with his small stock of goods and two or three hundred dollars in cash, constituted the total sum of his worldly wealth.
Dic's father, who was dead, had been considered well-to-do among his neighbors. He had died seized of four "eighties," all paid for, and two-thirds cleared for cultivation. Eighty acres of cleared bottom land was looked upon as a fair farm.
"Little," said Kennedy, "if you will make a stretcher of boughs we will carry Hill up to Bright's house and take him home in a wagon. I think he may live." Accordingly, a rude litter was constructed, and the four men carried the wounded Douglas to Dic's house, where he was placed upon a couch of hay in a wagon, and taken to his home, two or three miles eastward.
Dic saw his imminent danger and with his right hand clasped Doug's left wrist in a grasp that could not be loosened. After several futile attempts to free his wrist, Doug tossed the knife over to his right side. It fell a few inches beyond his reach, and he tried to grasp it. Rita saw that very soon he would reach the knife, and Dic's peril brought back her presence of mind.
As the long years of childhood passed, Dic began to visit the Bays home more frequently than Tom visited the Brights'. I do not know whether this change was owing to the increasing age of the boys, or but Rita was growing older and prettier every day, and you know that may have had something to do with Dic's visits.
He possessed Rita, and love made him magnanimous. He did not want to fight, though fear was no part of his reluctance. The manner of his antagonist soon left no doubt in Dic's mind that the battle was sure to come off.
The letter Sue Davidson had found altered Rita's feeling toward Sukey; but it left untouched Dic's sin against herself, and she insisted that she did not care for him, and never, never would forgive. With all her gentleness she had strong nerves, and her spirit, when aroused, was too high to brook patiently the insult Dic had put upon her. Miss Tousy's words had not moved her from her position.
Dic wondered what would be the hour when they should reach Greece and Egypt in their backward flight. But after the downfall of Rome, near the hour of two, Sir Roger was unhorsed, and went off to his castle and to bed. Then Rita bade Dic good-by, after exacting from him a solemn promise to return the next Sunday. Rita thought Dic's victory was a good omen, and drew much comfort from it.
Had Williams not been a suitor for her hand, Rita would have found him agreeable; and if her heart had been free, he might have won it. So long as he maintained the attitude of friend and did not conflict with Dic's claims, he was well received; but when he became a lover a condition difficult to refrain from she almost hated and greatly feared him.
Billy Little, who did not like Sukey, said her charms were "dimple-mental"; but Billy's heart was filled with many curious prejudices, and Tom's judgment was much more to be relied upon in this case. One morning when Sukey entered Dic's room she said: "Tom was to see me last night. He said he would come up to see you to-day." "He meant that he will come up to see you," replied Dic, teasing her.
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