Air ye in airnest, nigger?”
“Oh! I is, Mass’ ’Tump.
Sorry dis chile am to hab say dat am too troo.
Dey all gone to sarch atter de body.” “Hyur!
Take these things to the kitchen.
Thur’s a gobbler, an some purayra chickens.
Whar kin I find Miss Lewaze?”
“Here, Mr Stump.
Come this way!” replied a sweet voice well known to him, but now speaking in accents so sad he would scarce have recognised it.
“Alas! it is too true what Pluto has been telling you.
My brother is missing.
He has not been seen since the night before last.
His horse came home, with spots of blood upon the saddle.
O Zeb! it’s fearful to think of it!”
“Sure enuf that air ugly news.
He rud out somewhar, and the hoss kim back ’ithout him?
I don’t weesh to gie ye unneedcessary pain, Miss Lewaze; but, as they air still sarchin’ I mout be some help at that ere bizness; and maybe ye won’t mind tellin’ me the particklers?”
These were imparted, as far as known to her.
The gardes scene and its antecedents were alone kept back.
Oberdoffer was given as authority for the belief, that Henry had gone off after the mustanger.
The narrative was interrupted by bursts of grief, changing to indignation, when she came to tell Zeb of the suspicion entertained by the people—that Maurice was the murderer.
“It air a lie!” cried the hunter, partaking of the same sentiment: “a false, parjured lie! an he air a stinkin’ skunk that invented it.
The thing’s impossible.
The mowstanger ain’t the man to a dud sech a deed as that.
An’ why shed he have dud it?
If thur hed been an ill-feelin’ atween them. But thur wa’n’t.
I kin answer for the mowstanger—for more’n oncest I’ve heern him talk o’ your brother in the tallest kind o’ tarms.
In coorse he hated yur cousin Cash—an who doesn’t, I shed like to know?
Excuse me for sayin’ it.
As for the other, it air different. Ef thar hed been a quarrel an hot blood atween them—”
“No—no!” cried the young Creole, forgetting herself in the agony of her grief. “It was all over.
Henry was reconciled. He said so; and Maurice—”
The astounded look of the listener brought a period to her speech.
Covering her face with her hands, she buried her confusion in a flood of tears.
“Hoh—oh!” muttered Zeb; “thur hev been somethin’?
D’ye say, Miss Lewaze, thur war a—a—quarrel atween yur brother—”
“Dear, dear Zeb!” cried she, removing her hands, and confronting the stalwart hunter with an air of earnest entreaty, “promise me, you will keep my secret?
Promise it, as a friend—as a brave true-hearted man!
You will—you will?”
The pledge was given by the hunter raising his broad palm, and extending it with a sonorous slap over the region of his heart.
In five minutes more he was in possession of a secret which woman rarely confides to man—except to him who can profoundly appreciate the confidence.
The hunter showed less surprise than might have been expected; merely muttering to himself:—
“I thort it wild come to somethin’ o’ the sort—specially arter thet ere chase acrost the purayra.”
“Wal, Miss Lewaze,” he continued, speaking in a tone of kindly approval, “Zeb Stump don’t see anythin’ to be ashamed o’ in all thet.
Weemen will be weemen all the world over—on the purayras or off o’ them; an ef ye have lost yur young heart to the mowstanger, it wud be the tallest kind o’ a mistake to serpose ye hev displaced yur affeckshuns, as they calls it.
Though he air Irish, he aint none o’ the common sort; thet he aint.
As for the rest ye’ve been tellin’ me, it only sarves to substantify what I’ve been sayin’—that it air parfickly unpossible for the mowstanger to hev dud the dark deed; that is, ef thur’s been one dud at all. Let’s hope thur’s nothin’ o’ the kind.
What proof hez been found?
Only the hoss comin’ home wi’ some rid spots on the seddle?”
“Alas! there is more.