Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/265

 best. It tightened perceptibly at his brother's manner. He snapped out, "I want to see you." Matt did not reply, "Well, here I am." He had apparently recognized the horse; it was one that he had sold to the livery-stable, and, shifting his fishing-pole to the hand that held his bait-can, he patted the animal's flank thoughtfully.

"I want to see you alone somewhere," Ben said, with a growing impatience.

Matt nodded. He did not say, "Come along up to the house." He did not even give the invitation tacitly by moving to get into the buggy so that they might drive together to the barn. He stepped back from the horse, took the can of worms in his free hand, and said, "I'm goin' fishin'."

He said it placidly, and he met Ben's glare with an impenetrable mildness of melancholy brown eyes.

Ben caught up the reins. "Geddap!" he cried. "Get over there." He jerked the horse aside into the ditch.

Matt seemed more interested in the patient bewilderment of the horse than in the irascibility of the driver.

He was known to his neighbors as something of a philosopher. He had a theory of the earth's electric currents from which he predicted the weather. He knew the medicinal properties of some of the local plants, and dosed himself, for liver chills and rheumatism, with his own prescrip-