“Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had a cent fur over a month, I know.”
“Struck a client, maybe. Well, let’s get home before daylight. He’ll be all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cranium.”
The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table’s débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.
A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of these two families faced each other in peace. Goree’s eyelids puckered as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he smiled serenely.
“Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?” he said calmly.
“Do you know me, Yancey?” asked Coltrane.
“Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end.”
