I donno how I done it. For no reason, I guess, only that I'm big and strong and he was little and pindling. I know I never stopped to think or decide nothing. I dodged his hatchet and I jumped at him. I threw my whole strength at him, with my hands on his face and his throat. He went down like a log, because I was so much bigger and so strong. But that wouldn't have saved us, only that, as he fell, he hit his head on the sharp corner of the cook stove. He rolled over on his back, and the hatchet flew out on the zinc. "You killed him!" Mis' Bingy says. She sat up, but she didn't go to him. "We ain't no time to think of that," I says. "Get your things and come." She didn't ask anything. She took the baby and run right and got a bundle of things she'd got ready. I see then that she had on her best black dress, and the baby was all dressed clean and embroidered. I picked up the hatchet, and we went out the door, and shut it behind us. She never looked back, even when we got to the door; and I noticed that, because it wasn't like Mis' Bingy, that's soft and frightened. "I don't mind what he done to me," she said, "but just now he took the baby--and touched her hand--to the hot griddle." She showed me. "I hope he's dead," I said. "Where shall I go?" she says. "My God, where shall I go?" "Ain't you no folks?" I asked her. "Not near enough so's I've got the fare," she says. "Anyhow, I don't want to come on to them." We was in the grove at the time. I donno as it would have come to me so quick if we hadn't been there. "Mis' Bingy," I says, "let's us go to the city together, you and me. And find a job." I thought she'd draw back. But she just stopped still in the path and looked at me round the baby's head. "You couldn't do that, could you?" she says. "Yes," I says. "I didn't know it before, but I know it now. I could do that." She kep' on looking at me, with something coming in her face. "You couldn't go to-day, could you?" she says. I hadn't thought of to-day, but the thing was on me then. "Why not to-day as good as any day?" I says. "Your Ma--" she says. "This is different," I says. "This is for me to do." We come to the edge of the grove, and across the open lot I could see Mother. She was spreading out her scrubbing cloth on the grass to dry. I went up to her, and I wasn't scared nor I didn't dread anything because I was so sure. "Mother," I says, "Mis' Bingy and I are going up to the city together to get some work. And we're goin' to-day. But first I've got to go and find somebody. I donno but I've killed Mr. Bingy."