"It's curous, Minty, wot's foreordained, and wot ain't. Now, yer's one
of them high and mighty fellows, after the Lord, ez comes meanderin'
around here, and drops off--ez fur ez I kin hear--in a kind o' faint at
the first house he kems to, and is taken in and lodged and sumptuously
fed; and, nat'rally, they gets their reward for it. Now wot's to hev
kept that young feller from coming HERE and droppin' down in my forge,
or in this very room, and YOU a tendin' him, and jist layin' over them
folks at The Lookout?"
"Wot's got hold o' ye, Pop? Don't I tell ye he had a letter to Jim
Bradley?" said Minty, quickly, with an angry flash of color in her
cheek.
"That ain't it," said Sharpe confidently; "it's cos he WALKED.
Nat'rally, you'd think he'd RIDE, being high and mighty, and that's
where, ez the parson will tell ye, wot's merely fi-nite and human wisdom
errs! Ef that feller had ridden, he'd have had to come by this yer
road, and by this yer forge, and stop a spell like any other. But it
was foreordained that he should walk, jest cos it wasn't generally
kalkilated and reckoned on. So, YOU had no show."
For a moment, Minty seemed struck with her father's original theory.
But with a vigorous shake of her shoulders she threw it off.
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