Aleck!--you Aleck-k-k!"
A black boy darted round the corner, from behind which, with several
others, he had beheld the brief but stirring scene.
"Put a saddle on er mule. The elder's gwine back to town. And don't
you be long about it neither."
"Yessum." Aleck's ivories gleamed in the darkness as he disappeared.
Elder Brown was soberer at that moment than he had been for hours.
"Hannah, you don't mean it?"
"Yes, sir, I do. Back you go to town as sure as my name is Hannah
Brown."
The elder was silent. He had never known his wife to relent on any
occasion after she had affirmed her intention, supplemented with "as
sure as my name is Hannah Brown." It was her way of swearing. No
affidavit would have had half the claim upon her as that simple
enunciation.
So back to town went Elder Brown, not in the order of the early morn,
but silently, moodily, despairingly, surrounded by mental and actual
gloom.
The old man had turned a last appealing glance upon the angry woman,
as he mounted with Aleck's assistance, and sat in the light that
streamed from out the kitchen window.
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