Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/337

Rh back in honorable delicacy, and a slight sense of superstitious awe.

Retreating from one of these involuntary incursions one day, in passing through an opening in a little thicket of "buckeye" near his house, he stumbled over a small work-basket lying in the withered grass, apparently mislaid or forgotten. Gabriel instantly recognized it as the property of his wife, and as quickly recalled the locality as one of her favorite resorts during the excessive midday heats. He hesitated and then passed on, and then stopped and returned again awkwardly and bashfully. To have touched any property of his wife's, after their separation, was something distasteful and impossible to Gabriel's sense of honor; to leave it there the spoil of any passing Chinaman, or the prey of the elements, was equally inconsistent with a certain respect which Gabriel had for his wife's weaknesses. He compromised, by picking it up with the intention of sending it to Lawyer Maxwell, as his wife's trustee. But in doing this, to Gabriel's great alarm (for he would as soon have sacrificed the hand that held this treasure as to have exposed its contents in curiosity or suspicion), part of the multitudinous contents overflowed and fell on the ground, and he was obliged to pick them up and replace them. One of them was a baby's shirt so small it scarcely filled the great hand that grasped it. In Gabriel's emigrant experience, as the frequent custodian and nurse of the incomplete human animal, he was somewhat familiar with those sacred, mummy-like inwrappings usually unknown to childless men, and he recognized it at once.

He did not replace it in the basket, but with a suffused cheek and an increased sense of his usual awkwardness, stuffed it into the pocket of his blouse. Nor did he send the basket to Lawyer Maxwell, as he had intended, and in fact omitted any allusion to it in his usual account to Olly of his daily experience. For the next two days he was peculiarly silent and thoughtful, and was sharply reprimanded by Olly for general idiocy and an especial evasion of some practical duties.

"Yer's them lawyers hez been huntin' ye to come over and examine that there Chinaman, Ah Ri, ez is just turned up agin, and you ain't no whar to be found; and Lawyer Maxwell sez it's a most important witness. And war 'bouts was ye found? Down in the Gulch chirpin' and gossipin' with that Arkansas family, and totin' round Mrs. Welch's baby. And you a growed man, with a fammerly of yer own to look after. I wonder ye ain't got more sabe!—prancin' round in this yer shiftless way, and you on trial, and accused o' killin' folks. Yer a high ole Gabe—rentin' yerself out fur a dry nuss for nothin'!"

Gabriel (coloring and hastily endeavoring to awaken Olly's feminine sympathies): "It waz the powerfullest smallest baby—ye oughter get ter see it, Olly ! Tain't bigger nor a squirrel—on'y two weeks old yesterday!"

Olly (outwardly scornful, but inwardly resolving to visit the phenomenon next week): "Don't stand yowpin' here, but waltz down to Lawyer Maxwell and see thet Chinaman."

Gabriel reached the office of Lawyer Maxwell just as that gentleman and Arthur Poinsett were rising from a long, hopeless and unsatisfactory examination of Ah Ri. The lawyers had hoped to be able to establish the fact of Gabriel's remoteness from the scene of the murder, by some corroborating incident or individual that Ah Ri could furnish in support of the detailed narrative he had already given. But it did not appear that any Caucasian had been encountered or met by Ah Ri at the time of his errand. And Ah Ri's memory of the details he had already described was apparently beginning to be defective; it was evident that nothing was to be gained from him even if he had been constituted a legal witness. And then, more than all, he was becoming sullen!

"We are afraid that we haven't made much out of your friend, Ah Ri," said Arthur, taking Gabriel's hand. "You might try if you can revive his memory; but it looks doubtful."

Gabriel gazed at Ah Ri intently; possibly because he was the last person who had spoken to his missing wife. Ah Ri returned the gaze, discharging all expression from his countenance except a slight suggestion of the habitual vague astonishment always seen in the face of a new-born infant. Perhaps this peculiar expression, reminding Gabriel as it did of the phenomenon in the Welch family, interested him. But the few vague wandering questions he put were met by equally vague answers. Arthur rose in some impatience; Lawyer Maxwell wiped away the smile that had been lingering around his mouth. The interview was ended.

Arthur and Maxwell passed down the narrow stairway arm in arm. Gabriel would