“That you have,” she interrupted, her face hardening, as she looked across the ploughed fields, bordered by strips of yellow broom-sedge, towards the pine forests in the west.  “You wus cut bad, I heer, an’ laid up fer a week ur so, an’ then the skeer them Whitecaps give you on top of it must a’ been awful to a proud sperit like yore’n; but even sech as that will wear off in time.  But nothin’ human, John Westerfelt—­nothin’ human kin fetch back the dead.  Sally’s place is unoccupied.  I’m doin’ her work every day, an’ her dressin’ an’ pore little Sunday fixin’s is all still a-hangin’ on the wall.  She wus the only gal—­”

Washburn came back with the change.  The old woman’s thin hands quivered as she took the coin and slowly counted the pieces into her pocket-book, Washburn suspected from the expression of Westerfelt’s face that the conversation was of a private nature, so he went out to the hack to help Budd unharness the horses.

“No,” went on the old woman, sternly, “you’ve brought about a pile o’ misery in yore life, John Westerfelt, an’ you hain’t a-gwine to throw it off like a ol’ coat, an’ dance an’ make merry.  You may try that game; but yore day is over; you already bear the mark of it in yore face an’ sunk cheeks.  You’ve got another gal on yore string by this time, too.”

“You are mistaken, Mrs. Dawson.”

“How about the one at the hotel that nussed you through yore sick spell?”

“There is nothing between us.”  He hesitated, then added:  “Nothing at all, nor there never will be.”

“You say thar hain’t, but that don’t prove it.  I want to lay eyes on her; I can tell ef you have been up to yore old tricks when I see ’er.  Ef she’s got a purty face you have.”

He made no reply.

She hitched her burden up on her left hip and curved her body to the right.  “I’m a-gwine to put up thar, an’ I’ll see.  The Bradleys ’ll think quar ef I don’t put up with them, I reckon; but I’m gwine to try hotellin’ fer once.  Right now it’s in my line uv business.  Good-mornin’; I don’t owe you anything—­nothin’ in the money way, I mean.  Ah! you think I’m a devil, I reckon; well, you made me what I am.  I’m yore work, John Westerfelt!”

He stood in the stable door and watched the little bent figure walk away.  He saw her pass the cottages, the store, the bar, and enter the hotel; then he went through the stable into the back yard and stood against the wall in the warm sunlight.  He didn’t want Washburn to come to him just then with any questions about business.  A sudden, startling fear had come to him.  He was going to lose Harriet now, and through Mrs. Dawson, and it would be the just consequences of his early indiscretion.

Chapter XVI

As the old woman entered the hotel she saw no one.  Looking into the parlor, and seeing it empty, she went down the hall to the rear of the house.  The door of the dining-room was open.  Mrs. Floyd was there arranging some jars of preserves in the cupboard, and turned at the sound of the slip-shod feet.