At
night in the city he sat under the lamp with his wife and boasted. "I
make him step about," he said.
In the stable the hunchback kept at the heels of McGregor. "And
there's something else," he said, putting his hand in his pockets and
raising himself on his toes. "You look out for that undertaker's
daughter. She wants you. If she gets you there will be no law study
but a place in the mines for you. You let her alone and begin taking
care of your mother."
Beaut went on cleaning the horses and thinking of what the hunchback
had said. He thought there was sense to it. He also was afraid of the
tall pale girl. Sometimes when he looked at her a pain shot through
him and a combination of fear and desire gripped him. He walked away
from it and went free as he went free from the life in the darkness
down in the mine. "He has a kind of genius for keeping away from the
things he don't like," said the liveryman, talking to Uncle Charlie
Wheeler in the sun before the door of the post office.
One afternoon the two boys who worked in the livery stable with
McGregor got him drunk. The affair was a rude joke, elaborately
planned. The hunchback had stayed in the city for the day and no
travelling men got off the trains to be driven over the hills. In the
afternoon hay brought over the hill from the fruitful valley was being
put into the loft of the barn and between loads McGregor and the two
boys sat on the bench by the stable door.
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