“I jumped out, fer the music hed stopped, an’ started toward the spot. But ’fore I got there Hiram hed th’owed away his fiddle an’ run to the canal, an’ was down on his knees starin’ inter the wotter. A head come above the surface. Then an arm reached wildly out. The ole man bent over an’ grasped the hand. But it wasn’t no uset, fer he’d nawthin’ to support himself with. He took holt o’ the bank with his withered fingers, but the arm give ’way an’ he toppled over. Fer a minute all was still. I leaned over the wotter an’ waited. They was a ripple toward the middle, an’ two heads come up. I seen Hiram Gum’s long black hair an’ beard an’ his drawn face ez he looked at the sky overhead. Then they disappeared agin. The surface of the canal become quiet an’ still like nawthin’ hed ben happenin’. Then I turned an’ run.
“I flew along the towpath, acrosst the clearin’, inter the woods agin, an’ down toward the river where the boats lay hid among the willer bushes. An’ ez I went crashin’ th’oo the branches I hear a girl’s voice callin’.
“‘Hiram,’ she sais, ‘why was you fiddlin’? I thot you was never comin’.’
“Another second an’ I was th’oo the willers an’ on the bank. There, settin’ in a boat, her hands on the oars ready to pull away, was Susan Billings.”
The Patriarch beat his cane softly on the floor and hummed a snatch of a tune.
There came a short, quick puffing as the Loafer drew on his pipe, until the bright coals shone in the darkness.
“I don’t keer ’bout Sam Washin’ton. I must be goin’ home. I’ll git the rhuem’tism on sech a night sure, fer I’ve no horse-chestnut in me pocket.”
An air of gloom pervaded the store. Outside the rain came pattering down. It ran in torrents off the porch roof and across the entrance made a formidable moat, which had been temporarily bridged by an empty soapbox. It gathered on the limbs of the leafless trees and poured in steady streams upon the backs of the three forlorn horses, that, shivering under water-logged blankets, stood patiently, with hanging heads, at the hitching rail. Within everything was dry, to be sure, but the firewood, which was damp and would not burn, so the big egg stove sent forth no cheerful rays of heat and light. Out from its heart came the sound of sizzle and splutter as some isolated flame attacked a piece of wet hickory. It seemed to have conveyed its ill-humor to the little group around it.
