per floated down to me as a door creaked
open. "But it _is_--a girl. You must be ver--"

Her words were cut off by the report of a door banging shut. There was
the sibilant sound of a breath being drawn in and, at the same moment,
Mr. Darton's voice again.

"What the hell made ye think I'd want to see another _girl_ for?" he
growled.

A pause followed, the emptier for the preceding stridor of his voice.
Then--"You c'n get along now--we ain't got no more call fur neighbors."

With that he came stamping down the stairs and slouched into the front
room, where, upon his catching sight of me, a frightened look crossed
his face, followed, almost instantly, by a queer expression, a mixture
of relief and cunning that gave his face a grotesqueness that I can
recall to this very day.

"Well, boy," he said in that low drawl and wavelike inflection of the
voice that I was to learn to know so well, "yer father sent ye, did he?"

I proffered the note and the pills, and he frowned at them a second
before pocketing them.

"Come--_he-re_." He seemed to pull at the words, giving each a retarded
emphasis. As I approached, he drew me towards him, where he had sunk on
the dingy, orange-fringed sofa. "N-ow, y're a nice young fellow--a bit
scrawny, though. Ye--gotta horse?"

I shook my head.

"N-ow, then--ye aughtta have a h-orse. Yer pappy should see to't."

His gray eyes, then almost blue against the loose brown skin of his
face, held me speechless.

"N-ow I gotta horse--a fine horse fur a boy. Ye might ride her--like
to? Then, if yer pappy wanted, he cou'd buy her fur ye?"

I looked at him in doubt.

"Yes, he could. Yer pappy has more money than anyone hereabouts, and it
ain't right--I tell you, it ain't _right_ to have a little boy like you
and not give him--eve-ry thing he wants!"

His last words ended in that slow climactic inflection that made
whatever he said so indisputable. It was not unlike the minister's
voice, I thought; and, my glance chancing to fall on the opened Bible, I
was about to question him, when the door was pushed back hurriedly,
admitting my father's lank, wiry figure along with a stream of chilling
air.

"G-ood morning, Mr. Breighton--a f-ine morning."

"Morning, Darton," said my father crisply. "Can I go directly upstairs?"

"No hurry n-ow, Doctor. It's all over. Mrs. Carn's been here all morning
and--"

It was at this moment that Mrs. Carn, her eyelids red from weeping, an
old bumpy, red wo