"I'd know it in Babel," said the other with some fervour.
"Well, if she comes to the 'phone and speaks to you without restraint, we may be reasonably certain of two things: that O'Dowd is friendly and that he is able to fix it so that she can talk to you without being overheard or suspected by the others. It's worth trying, in any event."
"But there is Jones to consider. The telephone is in his office. What will he think--"
"Jones is all right," said Sprouse briefly. "Come along. You can call up from my room." He grinned slyly. "Such a thing as tapping the wire, you know."
Sprouse had installed a telephone in his room, carrying a wire upstairs from an attachment made in the cellar of the Tavern. He closed the door to his little room on the top floor.
"With the landlord's approval," he explained, pointing to the instrument, "but unknown to the telephone company, you may be sure. Call him up about half-past ten. O'Dowd may be up at this unholy hour, but not she. Now, I must be off to discuss literature with Mrs. Jim Conley. I've been working on her for two weeks. The hardest part of my job is to keep her from subscribing for a set of Dickens. She has been on the point of signing the contract at least a half dozen times, and I've been fearfully hard put to head her off. Conley's house is not far from Green Fancy. Savvy?"
Barnes, left to his own devices, wandered from tap-room to porch, from porch to forge, from forge to tap-room, his brain far more active than his legs, his heart as heavy as lead and as light as air by turns. More than once he felt like resorting to a well-known expedient to determine whether he was awake or dreaming. Could all this be real?
The sky was overcast. A cold, damp wind blew out of the north. There was a feel of rain in the air, an ugly greyness in the road that stretched its sharply defined course through the green fields that stole timorously up to the barren forest and stopped short, as if afraid to venture farther.
The ring of the hammer on the anvil lent cheer to the otherwise harsh and unlovely mood that had fallen upon Nature over night. It sang a song of defiance that even the mournful chant of sheep on the distant slopes failed to subdue. The crowing of a belated and no doubt mortified rooster, the barking of faraway dogs, the sighing of journeying winds, the lugubrious whistle of Mr. Clarence Dillingford, --all of these added something to the dreariness of the morning.