People talked about it that night and for days after. It was not a thing to forget--a man near grown who lacked the sand to resent that insult. A fist fight might have been forgotten, even a fist fight between these two heritors of a feud instinct, but not this. Some of the younger fellows didn't see, they said, how Jim Faxon could hold his head up again and look people in the eye. And Jim didn't hold his head up--not as high as he had held it before this happened. Broody-eyed and glum and tight-lipped, he tended Miss Puss Whitley's truck patch and brought his products to market every morning. He had always been quiet and sparing of speech; now he was quiet to the point almost of dumbness. A month and more went by, and old Ranee didn't ride in from Gum Spring, and then the Christmas came. Christmas Day fell on a Monday so that the Christmas itself properly started on the Saturday before. It was a warm and a green Christmas as most of them are in that climate, mild enough at midday for folks to sit on their front porches and just cold enough at night to beard the grass with a silver-gray frost rime. Languid looking house flies crawled out in the afternoons and cleaned their gummy wings while they sunned themselves on the southern sides of stables. The Christmas feeling was in the air. At the wharfboat lay the Clyde, deep laden for her annual jug-trip, with thousands of bottles and jugs and demi-johns consigned to the dry towns up the river. There was a big sidewalk trade going on in fire crackers and rockets, the Christinas and not the Fourth being the time for squibbing of crackers in the South, the market, though, was the busiest place of all. It fairly milled with people. Every huckster needed four hands, and still he wouldn't have had enough. Jimmy Faxon had little Emmy Hardin helping him through the hours when the pressure was greatest and the customers came fastest. She kept close to him, with little nestling motions, and yet there was something protecting in her attitude, as though she would stand between him and any danger, or any criticism. The looks she darted at him were fairly caressing. Through the jam appeared Ranee Fleming, elbowing his way roughly. His face above his straggly whiskers was red with temper and with liquor. His cotton shirt was open at the throat so that his hairy chest showed. His shapeless gray jeans trousers--gray originally but now faded and stained to a mud color--were both beltless and suspenderless, and were girthed tightly about his middle by the strap at the back. From much ramming of his hands into the pockets, they were now crowded down far upon his hips, showing an unwontedly long expanse of shirt; and this gave to him an abnormally short-legged, long-waisted look.