The first day that John felt strong enough to walk as far as that end of the
town, he was pulling himself unsteadily past the shop when he saw Peter and
turned in to rest and chat.The young blacksmith refused to speak to him.
"Peter!" said John with a sad, shaky voice, holding out his hand, "have I
changed so much? Don't you know me?"
"Yes; I know you," said Peter. "I wish I didn't."
"I don't think I recognize you any more," replied John, after a moment of
silence. "What's the matter?"
"Oh, you get along," said Peter. "Clear out!"
John went inside and drank a gourd of water out of Peter's cool bucket, came
back with a stool and sat down squarely before him.
"Now look here," he said with the candour which was always the first law of
nature with him, "what have I done to you?"
Peter would neither look nor speak; but being powerless before kindness, he
was beginning to break down.
"Out with it," said John. "What have I done?""You know what you've said."
"What have I said about you?" asked John, now perceiving that some mischief
had been at work here. "Who told you I had said anything about you?"
"It's no use for you to deny it."
"Who told you?"
"O'Bannon!"
"O'Bannon!" exclaimed John with a frown. "I've never talked to O'Bannon
about you--about anything."
"You haven't abused me?" said Peter, wheeling on the schoolmaster, eyes and
face and voice full of the suffering of his wounded self-love and of his
wounded affection.
"I hope I've abused nobody!" said John proudly.
"Come in here!" cried Peter, springing up and hurrying into his shop.
Near the door stood a walnut tree with wide-spreading branches wearing the
fresh plumes of late May, plumes that hung down over the door and across the
windows, suffusing the interior with a soft twilight of green and brown
shadows. A shaft of sunbeams penetrating a crevice fell on the white neck of
a yellow collie that lay on the ground with his head on his paws, his eyes
fixed reproachfully on the heels of the horse outside, his ears turned back
toward his master. Beside him a box had been kicked over: tools and shoes
scattered. A faint line of blue smoke sagged from the dying coals of the
forge toward the door, creeping across the anvil bright as if tipped with
silver. And in one of the darkest corners of the shop, near a bucket of
water in which floated a huge brown gourd, Peter and John sat on a bench
while the story of O'Bannon's mischief-making was begun and finished. It was
told by Peter with much cordial rubbing of his elbows in the palms of his
hands and much light-hearted smoothing of his apron over his knees. At times
a cloud, passing beneath the sun, threw the shop into heavier shadow; and
then the school-master's dark figure faded into the tone of the sooty wall
behind him and only his face, with the contrast of its white linen collar
below and the bare discernible lights of his auburn hair above--his face,
proud, resolute, astounded, pallid, suffering--started out of the gloom like
a portrait from an old canvas.