Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/129

 There was my duty—and what is a man's life against that!"

I saw Abner's back straighten and I heard his feet grind on the iron of his stirrups.

"And now, Smallwood," he said, and his voice was like the menace of a weapon, "will you tell me how it was possible for you to go into a house that was dark and filled with smoke, and thus quickly—in a moment—find those empty saddle pockets, unless you knew exactly where they were?"

I saw that Abner's question had impaled the man, as one pierces a fly through with a needle; and, like a fly, the man in his confusion fluttered.

"Smallwood," said Abner, "you are a thief and a hypocrite and a liar! And, like all liars, you have destroyed yourself! You not only stole this money but you tried to make your father an accomplice in that robbery. To conceal it, you hid it in this dead man's house. And, behold, the dead man has held his house against you! When you came here last night to carry away the money you found that the slab over your father's grave had fallen and wedged itself in against the limestone coping, and you could not lift it; and so you went back for that crowbar. . . . But who knows, you thief, what influence, though he be dead, a just man has with God! I came in time to help your father hold his house—and against his son, with a weapon in his hand!"

I saw the man cringe and writhe and shiver, as though he were unable to get out of his tracks; then 116