"Yes, he's just as spry and pert as anybody.He seems to have recovered entirely from all his wounds; none of 'em have disfiggered him any, and his nerves have got over their terrible strain."Tim ran promptly through all the notes in his diapason, and the rest joined in on the middle register.
"Well, I'm not at all surprised," said Mr.Oldunker, a bitter States' Rights Democrat, and the oracle of his party."I told you how it'd be from the first.Harry Glen was one of them Wide-Awakes that marched around on pleasant evenings last Fall with oil-cloth capes and kerosene lamps.I told you that those fellows'd be no where when the war they were trying to bring on came.I'm not at all astonished that he showed himself lily-livered when he found the people that he was willing to rob of their property standing ready to fight for their homes and their slaves.""Ready to shoot into a crowd of unsuspecting men, you mean," sneered Basil Wurmset, "and then break their own cursed necks when they saw a little cold steel coming their way."Tim came in promptly with his risible symphony.
"Well, they didn't run away from any cold steel that Harry Glen displayed," sneered Oldunker.
Tim's laugh was allegro and crescendo at the first, and staccato at the close.
"You seem to forget that Capt.Bob Bennett was a Wide-Awake, too,"retorted Wurmset, "though you might have remembered it from his having threatened to lick you for encouraging the boys to stone the lamps in the procession."Tim cackled, gurgled and roared.
Nels Hathaway had kept silent as long as he could.He must put his oar into the conversational tide.
"I'd give six bits," he said, "to know how the meeting between him and Rachel Bond passes off.He's gone up to the house.The boys seen him, all dressed up his best.But his finery and his perfumed hankerchiefs won't count anything with her, I can tell YOU.She comes of fighting stock, if ever a woman did.The Bonds and Harringtons--her mother's people--are game breeds, both of 'em, and stand right on their record, every time.She'll have precious little traffic with a white-feathered fellow.I think she's been preparing for him the coldest shoulder any young feller in Sardis's got for many a long day."There was nothing very funny in this speech, but a good deal of risible matter had accumulated in Tim's diaphragm during its delivery which he had to get rid of, and he did.
Harry had heard enough.While Tim's laugh yet resounded he walked away unnoticed, and taking a roundabout course gained his room.
There he remained a week, hardly coming down to his meals.It was a terrible week for him, for every waking hour of it he walked through the valley of humiliation, and drank the bitter waters of shame.The joints of his hitherto impenetrable armor of self-conceit had been so pierced by the fine rapier thrusts of Rachel's scorn that it fell from him under the coarse pounding of the village loungers and left him naked and defenseless to their blows.Every nerve and sense ached with acute pain.He now felt all of his father's humiliation, all his mother's querulous sorrow, all his betrothed's anguish and abasement.
