“Harve Allen bellowed once, like a bull, and downed him and jumped on him and stomped him in the chest with his knees and pounded and clouted him in the face until the little man stretched out on the ground still and quiet. Then, Harve climbed off of him and swaggered off. Even now, looking back on it all, it seems like a shameful thing to admit, but nobody dared touch a hand to Singin' Sandy until Harve was plumb gone. As soon, though, as Harve was out of sight behind a cabin, some of them went to the little man and picked him up and worked over him until he came to. If his face had been dog's meat before, it was calf's liver now--just pounded out of shape. He couldn't get but one eye open. I still remember how it looked. It looked like a piece of cold gray quartz--like the tip of one these here gray flint Indian darts. He held one hand to his side--two of his ribs were caved in, it turned out--and he braced himself against the wall of the doggery and looked around him. He was looking for Harve Allen. “'Tell him for me,' he said slow and thick, 'that I'll be back agin in a month, the same as usual.' “And then he went back out the road into the oak barrens, falling down and getting up and falling some more, but keeping right on. And by everything that's holy, he was trying to sing as he went and making a bubbling noise through the blood that was in his throat. “They all stood staring at him until he was away off amongst the trees, and then they recalled that that was what he had said before--that he'd be back in a month; and two or three of them went and hunted up Harve Allen and gave him the message. He swore and laughed that laugh of his, and looked hard at them and said: “'The runty varmint must love a beatin' a sight better than some other folks I could name,' and at that they sidled off, scenting trouble for themselves if Harve should happen to take it into his head that they'd sided with Singin' Sandy.” Cap'n Jasper stopped to taste of his toddy, and the other older men stirred slightly, impatient for him to go on. Sitting there on the top step of the porch, I hugged my knees in my arms and waited breathless, and Singin' Sandy and Harve Allen visualized themselves for me there before my eyes. In the still I could hear the darkies singing their Sweet Chariot hymn at their little white church beyond the orchard. That was the fourth time that night they had sung that same song, and when they switched to “Old Ark A'Movin'” we would know that the mourners were beginning to “come through” and seek the mourners' bench. Cap'n Jasper cleared his throat briskly, as a man might rap with a gavel for attention and talked on: