So Dave
stopped his sneering remarks against Hale and began to dream his
old dreams, though he never opened his lips to June, and she was
unconscious of what was going on within him. By and by, as old
Judd began to mend, overtures of peace came, singularly enough,
from the Falins, and while the old man snorted with contemptuous
disbelief at them as a pretence to throw him off his guard, Dave
began actually to believe that they were sincere, and straightway
forged a plan of his own, even if the Tollivers did persist in
going West. So one morning as he mounted his horse at old Judd's
gate, he called to June in the garden:
"I'm a-goin' over to the Gap." June paled, but Dave was not
looking at her.
"What for?" she asked, steadying her voice.
"Business," he answered, and he laughed curiously and, still
without looking at her, rode away.
* * * * * * *
Hale sat in the porch of his little office that morning, and the
Hon. Sam Budd, who had risen to leave, stood with his hands deep
in his pockets, his hat tilted far over his big goggles, looking
down at the dead leaves that floated like lost hopes on the placid
mill-pond.
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