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Page 65
"The negroes said the floor had been scrubbed when they found
you."
"They were drunk," continued the hunchback with no concern.
"And, does one hold a drunken negro to his fact? But you saw for
yourself the wooden boxes, round, three inches high, with tin
lids, and of a diameter to hold a stack of golden eagles, and you
saw the indigo still sticking about the sides of these boxes
where the coins had lain."
"I did," replied my father. "I observed it carefully, for I
thought the gold pieces might turn up sometime, and the blue
indigo stain might be on them when they first appeared."
Dillworth leaned far back in his chair, his legs tangled under
him, his eyes on my father, in reflection. Finally he spoke.
"You are far-sighted," he said.
"Or God is," replied my father, and, stepping over to the table,
he spun a gold piece on the polished surface of the mahogany
board.
The hunchback watched the yellow disk turn and flit and wabble on
its base and flutter down with its tingling reverberations.
"To-day, when I rode into the county seat to a sitting of the
justices," continued my father, "the sheriff showed me some gold
eagles that your man from Maryland, Mr. Henderson, had paid in on
court costs. Look, Dillworth, there is one of them, and with
your thumb nail on the milled edge you can scrape off the
indigo!"
The hunchback looked at the spinning coin, but he did not touch
it. His head, with its long, straight hair, swung a moment
uncertain between his shoulders. Then, swiftly and with a firm
grip, he took his resolution.
"The coins appear," he said. "My brother David must be in
Baltimore behind this suit."
"He is not in Baltimore," said my father.
"Perhaps you know where he is," cried the hunchback, "since you
speak with such authority."
"I do know where he is," said my father in his deep, level voice.
The hunchback got on his feet slowly beside his chair. And the
girl came into the protection of my father's arm, her features
white like plaster; but the fiber in her blood was good and she
stood up to face the thing that might be coming. After the one
long abandonment to tears in my father's saddle she had got
herself in hand. She had gone, like the princes of the blood,
through the fire, and the dross of weakness was burned out.
The hunchback got on his feet, in position like a duelist, his
hard, bitter face turned slantwise toward my father.
"Then," he said, "if you know where David is you will take his
daughter to him, if you please, and rid my house of the burden of
her."
"We shall go to him," said my father slowly, "but he shall not
return to us."
The hunchback's eyes blinked and bated in the candlelight.
"You quote the Scriptures," he said. "Is David in a grave?"
"He is not," replied my father.
The hunchback seemed to advance like a duelist who parries the
first thrust of his opponent. But my father met him with an even
voice.
"Dillworth," he said, "it was strange that no man ever saw your
brother or the horse after the night he visited you in this
house."
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