“This girl he was with to-night, has she father or brothers?”

“No, the’s jest her an’ ’er mother.”

“Isn’t it pretty risky for her to go with him so much?”

“Oh, I reckon she kin take care o’ herse’f; she has that look to me; besides, she’s been warned; my wife an’ among ’em has talked to her plenty o’ times.  I reckon she knows what he is well enough.  Do you know I had my eye on you an’ her to-night?”

“What do you mean, Luke?” Westerfelt managed to avoid meeting the eye of his host as he put the question.  He could not remember ever having waited for a reply with more concern.

“Oh, I don’t know,” smiled Bradley, knowingly; “but somehow you an’ her seemed to me to be head an’ shoulders above the rest o’ that silly crowd.  The idee just popped into my head that you’d make a spankin’ team, an’ then ag’in” (Bradley laughed) “I tuck notice that you never went up to ‘er an’ talked to her free-like, as you did to most o’ the rest, an’ I remembered I wus jest that big a fool when I fust met Marthy.  But you wus a-watchin’ of her, though.  I’ll bet ef you looked at ’er once you did forty times.  As for her, I happen to know some’n funny.  You see, I heerd her an’ Wambush a-talkin’ on the back porch when I went out thar to draw up a bucket o’ water.  The rope had got tangled somehow, an’ I had to fix it, an’ while I was doin’ of it I couldn’t help heerin’ what they said, beca’se Toot wus as mad as a wet hen, an’ didn’t keer a dern who heerd ’im.”

“Mad—­at her?” ejaculated Westerfelt.

“Yes; it seemed that he had bantered her to say what she thought about you, an’ she’d up an’ told him you wus about the best-lookin’ man she’d ever seed, an’ that you looked like a born gentleman, an’ one thing anuther.  I couldn’t heer all that passed betwixt ’em, but he wus as nigh a’ explosion as I ever seed ‘im git without goin’ off.  You’d better look out.  He won’t do to meddle with.  He’s a bad egg—­an’ tricky.”

When Bradley had gone, leaving his guest in the dark, Westerfelt found himself unable to sleep for thinking of what Luke had said.

“I wonder, really,” he mused, “why I didn’t talk to her as I did to the others, for I certainly wanted to bad enough.”

Chapter VI

Westerfelt’s room at the stable was at the head of a flight of steps leading up from the office.  It had only a single window, but it commanded a partial view of several roads leading into the village, and a sparse row of houses on the opposite side of the street.  In front of the stable stood a blacksmith shop, and next to it, on the right, the only store in the village.  The store building had two rooms, the front being used for dry-goods, groceries, and country produce, the one in the rear as the residence of the storekeeper.  Next to the store, in a sort of lean-to, whitewashed shed with green shutters, was a bar-room.  Farther on in this row, opposite the jail of the place, and partially hidden by the thinning foliage of sycamore, chestnut, and mulberry trees, was the hotel.  It was the only two-storied building in the village.  It had dormer windows in the roof and a long veranda in front.