Page:Post--Dwellers in the hills.djvu/249

Rh the sleeves rolled up above his wrists, a coat that Roy had fished out of a box in the loft of his tavern and hesitated over, because on an evening in his youthful heyday, he had gone in that coat to make a bride of a certain Mathilda, and the said Mathilda at the final moment did most stubbornly refuse. The coat had brass buttons, a plenteous pitting of moth-holes, and a braided collar.

Jud went on without noticing the interruption. "The letter that Twiggs brought was a-layin' on the mantelpiece, tore open. Quiller could a looked just as easy as not, an' a found out just what it said, but he edged off."

The hunchback turned around in his blue coat without disturbing the swallowtails lying against his legs. "Is Jud right?" he said.

I nodded my head.

"An' you did n't look?"

Again I nodded.

"Quiller," cried Ump, "do you know how that way of talkin' started? The devil was the daddy of it. He had his mouth crammed full of souls, an' when they asked him if he