THE STEADFAST HEART
“I’m a-goin’ to figger it out yit,” Jake always said as he took his departure. “I’ll remember you ’fore I’m done.”
“You won’t,” declared Titus, “’cause you hain’t never seen me before.”
Jake cross-questioned Titus, but the man was close-mouthed and guarded, not without a certain malign shrewdness. Not a word could be had from him which related to his life before he had come to Rainbow with his wife and child. From that date he was willing to describe his vicissitudes and to boast of his accomplishments—but all that day before his coming was a shut book which he would not open.
Jake baited traps with the names of towns he had worked in, but Titus avoided the pitfalls until, one day, Jake mentioned inadvertently the name of Springfield, Massachusetts. Suddenly he slapped his thigh, “There’s where it was, feller,” he said to Titus. “I was workin’ as journeyman printer fer Ol’ Somers—twenty-seven, twenty-eight year ago—mebby more. You remember Ol’ Somers? There’s where it was! You was stickin’ type in that shop—and suthin’ else. What else had I ought to remember about ye?… And your name wa’n’t Burke… I know, you was always a-playin’ the races… I got you that fur, hain’t I, friend?”
“You lie…. You lie. I hain’t never been
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