CHAPTER IV.

WHAT AH FE DOES NOT KNOW.

Thus admonished by the practical-minded Olly, Gabriel retired precipitately to the secure fastnesses of Conroy's Hill, where, over a consolatory pipe in his deserted cabin, he gave himself up to reflections upon the uncertainty of the sex and the general vagaries of womanhood. At such times he would occasionally extend his wanderings to the gigantic pine tree which still towered pre-eminently above its fellows in ominous loneliness, and seated upon one of its outlying roots, would gently philosophise to himself regarding his condition, the vicissitudes of fortune, the awful prescience of Olly, and the beneficence of a Creator who permitted such awkward triviality and uselessness as was incarnate in himself to exist at all! Sometimes, following the impulse of habit, he would encroach abstractedly upon the limits of his own domain, and find himself under the shadow of his own fine house on the hill, from which, since that eventful parting with his wife, he had always rigidly withheld his foot. As soon as he would make this alarming discovery, he would turn back in honourable delicacy and a slight sense of superstitious awe. Retreating from one of these involuntary incursions one day, in passing through an opening in a little thicket of "buckeye" near his house, he stumbled over a small workbasket lying in the withered grass, apparently mislaid or forgotten. Gabriel instantly recognised it as the property of his wife, and as quickly recalled the locality as one of her favourite resorts during the excessive mid-day heats. He hesitated and then passed on, and then stopped and returned again awkwardly and bashfully. To have touched any property of his wife's, after their separation, was something distasteful and impossible to Gabriel's sense of honour; to leave it there the spoil of any passing Chinaman, or the prey of the elements, was equally inconsistent with a certain respect which Gabriel had for his wife's weaknesses. He compromised by picking it up with the intention of sending it to Lawyer Maxwell, as his wife's trustee. But in doing this, to Gabriel's great alarm (for he would as soon have sacrificed the hand that held this treasure as to have exposed its contents in curiosity or suspicion), part of that multitudinous contents overflowed and fell on the ground, and he was obliged to pick them up and replace them. One of them was a baby's shirt--so small it filled the great hand that grasped it. In Gabriel's emigrant experience, as the frequent custodian and nurse of the incomplete human animal, he was somewhat familiar with those sacred, mummy-like enwrappings usually unknown to childless men, and he recognised it at once.

He did not replace it in the basket, but, with a suffused cheek and an increased sense of his usual awkwardness, stuffed it into the pocket of his blouse. Nor did he send the basket to Lawyer Maxwell, as he had intended, and in fact omitted any allusion to it in his usual account to Olly of his daily experience. For the next two days he was peculiarly silent and thoughtful, and was sharply reprimanded by Olly for general idiocy and an especial evasion of some practical duties.

"Yer's them lawyers hez been huntin' ye to come over and examine that there Chinaman, Ah Fe, ez is jest turned up ag'in, and you ain't no whar to be found; and Lawyer Maxwell sez it's a most important witness. And whar' bouts was ye found? Down in the Gulch, chirpin' and gossipin' with that Arkansas family, and totin' round Mrs. Welch's baby. And you a growed man, with a fammerly of yer own to look after. I wonder ye ain't got more _sabe_!--prancin' round in this yer shiftless way, and you on trial, and accused o' killin' folks. Yer a high ole Gabe--rentin' yerself out fur a dry nuss for nothin'!"

Gabriel (colouring and hastily endeavouring to awaken Olly's feminine sympathies): "It waz the powerfullest, smallest baby--ye oughter get to see it, Olly! 'Tain't bigger nor a squirrel--on'y two weeks old yesterday!"

Olly (outwardly scornful, but inwardly resolving to visit the phenomenon next week): "Don't stand yawpin' here, but waltz down to Lawyer Maxwell and see that Chinaman."

Gabriel reached the office of Lawyer Maxwell just as that gentleman and Arthur Poinsett were rising from a long, hopeless, and unsatisfactory examination of Ah Fe. The lawyers had hoped to be able to establish the fact of Gabriel's remoteness from the scene of the murder by some corroborating incident or individual that Ah Fe could furnish in support of the detailed narrative he had already given. But it did not appear that any Caucasian had been encountered or met by Ah Fe at the time of his errand. And Ah Fe's memory of the details he had already described was apparently beginning to be defective; it was evident nothing was to be gained from him even if he had been constituted a legal witness. And then, more than all, he was becoming sullen!

"We are afraid that we haven't made much out of your friend, Ah Fe," said Arthur, taking Gabriel's hand. "You might try if _you_ can revive his memory, but it looks doubtful."

Gabriel gazed at Ah Fe intently--possibly because he was the last person who had spoken to his missing wife. Ah Fe returned the gaze, discharging all expression from his countenance, except a slight suggestion of the habitual vague astonishment always seen in the face of a newborn infant. Perhaps this peculiar expression, reminding Gabriel as it did of the phenomenon in the Welch family, interested him. But the few vague wandering questions he put were met by equally vague answers. Arthur rose in some impatience; Lawyer Maxwell wiped away the smile that had been lingering around his mouth. The interview was ended.

Arthur and Maxwell passed down the narrow stairway arm in arm. Gabriel would have followed them with Ah Fe, but turning toward that Mongolian, he was alarmed by a swift spasm of expression that suddenly convulsed Ah Fe's face. He winked both his eyes with the velocity of sheet-lightning, nodded his head with frightful rapidity, and snapped and apparently dislocated every finger on his right hand. Gabriel gazed at him in open-mouthed wonder.

"All litee!" said Ah Fe, looking intently at Gabriel.

"Which?" asked Gabriel.

"All litee! You shabbee 'all litee!' _She_ say 'all litee.'"

"Who's _she_?" asked Gabriel, in sudden alarm.

"You lifee!--shabbee?--Missee Conloy! She likee you--shabbee? Me likee you!--shabbee? Miss Conloy she say 'all litee!' You shabbee shelliff?"

"Which?" said Gabriel.

"Shelliff! Man plenty chokee bad man!"

"Sheriff, I reckon," suggested Gabriel, with great gravity.

"Um! Shelliff. Mebbe you shabbee him bimeby. He chokee bad man. Much chokee. Chokee like hellee! _He no chokee you._ No. Shabbee? She say 'shelliff no chokee you.' Shabbee?"

"I see," said Gabriel, significantly.

"She say," continued Ah Fe, with gasping swiftness, "she say you talkee too much. She say me talkee too much. She say Maxwellee talkee too much. All talkee too much. She say 'no talkee!' Shabbee? She say 'ash up!' Shabbee? She say 'dly up!' Shabbee? She say 'bimeby plenty talkee--bimeby all litee!' Shabbee?"

"But whar ez she--whar kin I git to see her?" asked Gabriel.

Ah Fe's face instantly discharged itself of all expression. A wet sponge could not have more completely obliterated all pencilled outline of character or thought from his blank slate-coloured physiognomy than did Gabriel's simple question. He returned his questioner's glance with ineffable calmness and vacancy, patiently drew the long sleeves of his blouse still further over his varnished fingers, crossed them submissively and Orientally before him, and waited apparently for Gabriel to become again intelligible.

"Look yer," said Gabriel, with gentle persuasiveness, "ef it's the same to ye, you'd be doin' me a heap o' good ef you'd let on whar thet July--thet Mrs. Conroy ez. Bein' a man ez in his blindness bows down to wood and stun, ye ain't supposed to allow fur a Christian's feelings. But I put to ye ez a far-minded brethren--a true man and a man whatsoever his colour that it's a square thing fur ye to allow to me whar thet woman ez ez my relation by marriage ez hidin'! Allowin' it's one o' my idols--I axes you as a brother Pagan--whar ez she?"

A faint, flickering smile of pathetic abstraction and simplicity, as of one listening to far-off but incomprehensible music stole over Ah Fe's face. Then he said kindly, gently, but somewhat vaguely and unsatisfactorily--

"Me no shabbee Melican man. Me washee shirtee! dollah and hap dozen!"