Thus while I hesitated time passed and my next meeting with Old Toombs, instead of being premeditated, came about quite unexpectedly. I was walking in the town road late one afternoon when I heard a wagon rattling behind me, and then, quite suddenly, a shouted, "Whoa."
Looking around, I saw Old Toombs, his great solid figure mounted high on the wagon seat, the reins held fast in the fingers of one hand. I was struck by the strange expression in his face--a sort of grim exaltation. As I stepped aside he burst out in a loud, shrill, cackling laugh:
"He-he-he--he-he-he--"
I was too astonished to speak at once. Ordinarily when I meet any one in the town road it is in my heart to cry out to him, "Good morning, friend," or, "How are you, brother?" but I had no such prompting that day.
"Git in, Grayson," he said; "git in, git in."
I climbed up beside him, and he slapped me on the knee with another burst of shrill laughter.
"They thought they had the old man," he said, starting up his horses. "They thought there weren't no law left in Israel. I showed 'em."
I cannot convey the bitter triumphancy of his voice.
"You mean the road case?" I asked.
"Road case!" he exploded, "they wan't no road case; they didn't have no road case. I beat 'em. I says to 'em, 'What right hev any o' you on my property? Go round with you,' I says. Oh, I beat 'em. If they'd had their way, they'd 'a' cut through my hedge--the hounds!"
When he set me down at my door, I had said hardly a word. There seemed nothing that could be said. I remember I stood for some time watching the old man as he rode away, his wagon jolting in the country road, his stout figure perched firmly in the seat. I went in with a sense of heaviness at the heart.
"Harriet," I said, "there are some things in this world beyond human remedy."
Two evenings later I was surprised to see the Scotch Preacher drive up to my gate and hastily tie his horse.
"David," said he, "there's bad business afoot. A lot of the young fellows in Swan Hill are planning a raid on Old Toombs's hedge.
They are coming down to-night."
I got my hat and jumped in with him. We drove up the hilly road and out around Old Toombs's farm and thus came, near to the settlement. I had no conception of the bitterness that the lawsuit had engendered.
"Where once you start men hating one another," said the Scotch Preacher, "there's utterly no end of it."
I have seen our Scotch Preacher in many difficult places, but never have I seen him rise to greater heights than he did that night. It is not in his preaching that Doctor McAlway excels, but what a power he is among men! He was like some stern old giant, standing there and holding up the portals of civilization.
I saw men melt under his words like wax; I saw wild young fellows subdued into quietude; I saw unwise old men set to thinking.
"Man, man," he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotch accent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, and riot! You canna! Not in this neighbourhood!"
"What about Old Toombs?" shouted one of the boys.
I never shall forget how Doctor McAlway drew himself up nor the majesty that looked from his eye.
"Old Toombs!" he said in a voice that thrilled one to the bone, "Old Toombs! Have you no faith, that you stand in the place of Almighty God and measure punishments?"
