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But the Wolfhound remained standing, some twenty paces from Jess's shelter, and, when the man was almost out of sight, stepped forward and lay down within a yard or two of the kangaroo-hound. "Queer card, that Wolf!" muttered Bill, as he rode away. "But he's pretty white, too; whiter'n some men, I reckon, for all he's so mighty suspicious."
Twenty years had passed since Joey ran down the brae to play. Jess, his mother, shook her staff fondly at him. A cart rumbled by, the driver nodding on the shaft. It rounded the corner and stopped suddenly, and then a woman screamed. A handful of men carried Joey's dead body to his mother, and that was the tragedy of Jess's life.
They ought to have been headed "Our Pretoria Letter," as Bessie said disgustedly after reading through three sheets in Jess's curious, upright handwriting. "Once you lose sight of Jess," she went on, "she might as well be dead for all you learn about her. Not that one learns very much when she is here," she added reflectively. "She is a peculiar woman," said John thoughtfully.
"Ou fine that," said Jess. "Meg talks in her sleep." Before Agnew Greatorix leaped on to his horse, which all this time had stood quiet on his bridle-arm, only occasion ally jerking his head as if to ask his master to come away, he took the kiss he had been denied, and rode away laugh ing, but with one cheek much redder than the other, the mark of Jess's vengeance.
Thus it was that the great event happened in my presence. Jamie rose and stood near Jess I daresay he had planned the scene frequently. Then he produced from his pocket a purse, and coolly opened it. Silence fell upon us as we saw that purse. From it he took a neatly-folded piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it into Jess's lap. I cannot say whether Jess knew what it was.
True, Jess was a very gentle beast, so quiet that the old mother-hen with fourteen chicks used, instead of roosting with the rest of the fowls, to come regularly into the portion of the cow-shed which was partitioned off for a stable, and settle under a corner of Jess's manger for the night; and in the morning the chicks would be seen running about fearlessly among her feet and under her very nose.
In the house on the brae was a great kettle, called the boiler, that was said to be fifty years old in the days of Hendry's grandfather, of whom nothing more is known. Jess's chair, which had carved arms and a seat stuffed with rags, had been Snecky Hobart's father's before it was hers, and old Snecky bought it at a roup in the Tenements.
"Oh, Peggy's trying to work up a romantic mystery about the professor," teased Jess; "maybe he's a wandering British lord in disguise or the interesting but wayward son of a millionaire with a hobby for socialism." The others burst into laughter at Jess's raillery, but Miss Prescott gently said: "There is a great deal in womanly intuition, my dear, and for my part I had the same feeling as you.
The maniacs, with commendable promptness, jerked Severne to his feet. Several more bent over his horse. "Jess's I thought!" shouted one of these. "Jess's I thought! He's stole this cayuse. This is Hank Smith's bronc. I'd know him any-whar!" "That's right! Bar O brand!" cried several. Then men who held him yanked Severne here and there. "End of yore rope this trip!
I do not know that I have been able to show in the most imperfect way what kind of man Hendry was. He was dense in many things, and the cleverness that was Jess's had been denied to him. He had less book-learning than most of those with whom he passed his days, and he had little skill in talk. I have not known a man more easily taken in by persons whose speech had two faces.
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