Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/260

250 "Wolves, stranger? Well, now, that can't be; for, you see, I come from all about, and nobody that I seed along the road, or in any settlement, made complaint. I reckon you aint hearn very particular right, now."

"It must be the owls, then—yes, it is the owls; have you seen any of them on your way?"

This question, urged with the utmost gravity by the partisan, completed the fellow's astonishment. Revolving the huge quid of tobacco—for such it seemed—which from the commencement of the dialogue had been going to and fro between his jaws, it was some seconds before he could recover sufficiently from his astonishment to reply.

"Owls! God bless me, stranger, but that's a queer question, anyhow. To be sure thar's owls all along the Santee. You may hear them in the swamp any time o' night, and an ugly noise they makes all night long, but nobody thinks o' minding them. They troubles nobody, and sometimes, when there's going to be a death in the family, the white owls comes into the bedroom, and they won't drive 'em out, for you see it's no use; the sick body will die after that, whether they drive the owl off or no."

"Yes, yes—true;" said Singleton musingly, while watching the other's countenance with a circumspect regard. He saw that the countryman was not the man he expected, but even with this discovery there had grown other suspicions as to his real character, the more particularly as he perceived how disquieted the examination and restraint had made him. After a moment's pause, he proceeded to put a more direct inquiry.

"Where do you live upon the Santee?"

"Well, now, stranger, I don't know if you'll know the place when I tell you, seeing it's a little out of the way of the settlement; but I live close upon the left hand fork of the White Oak Branch, a leetle above the road that runs to Williamsburg. I come down that road when I crossed the Santee."

"And where did you cross the Santee?"

"At Vance's ferry:—I 'spose you know where that is?"

"I do; but why did you not cross at Nelson's—why go out of your way to Vance's?"