"A bully set you are, ain't you? Gw'yne around a-counting up after a sick woman. And what do you know, anyhow?" He took hold of the nervous top, and again set it spinning. "That little woman, she come as we come. God Almighty didn't set no mark and gauge on you, and you shan't go 'round and count up after her. Do you hear? Now you git. You're wanted. Hatchet-face wants yer. Do you hear?" The man spun his top about till its face was to the door, and it went out as a sort of handle to the hatchet, and was seen no more that night. Yet for all this there had been a great ripple in the wave that had to run even to the shore before it could disappear from the face of things at the Forks. CHAPTER XXII. DEBATABLE GROUND. The next day when Sandy came down, the enthusiasm was at a low ebb. He missed the great reception he had expected, and went back home that night a troubled and anxious man. What could be the matter? He asked Limber Tim, but Limber Tim had learned the power and security of silence, and either could not or would not venture on any revelations. Besides that, he was very busy helping Bunker Hill with the baby. The camp openly and at all convenient times discussed the question now, and it began to gradually take shape in the minds of men that something was really wrong. Kind old Sandy did not dream what the trouble could be. He feared he had not been generous enough under his good fortune, and was all the time opening the mouth of his leather bag at the bar and pouring gold dust into the scales, and entreating the boys to drink to the health of their little Half-a-pint. "Yes, our little Half-a-pint it is, I reckons; leastwise it's pretty certain it ain't yourn." Sandy looked at the man, and then the man set down his glass untouched and went off. He had not meant all that he had said, but having blurted it out in a very awkward way and at the very worst time, got off and out of it as best he could. Sandy was tortured. The dear little Widow saw it, and asked him what the trouble was, and the man, blunt, honest fellow, told all that had happened. The camp was disgusted with the man who had mooted this question. They counted him a traitor to the Forks--a sort of Judas. If he had gone and hung himself the camp would have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, it is pretty certain that the camp would have been very glad to have had any excuse, even the least bit of an excuse, to do that office for him. Then the camp was angry with Sandy, too, on general principles. He had betrayed them into a sort of idol-worship under a mistake. He had lured it into the expression of an enthusiasm quite out of keeping with the dignity of a rough and hardy race of men, and it did not like it. "The great big idiot!" said the camp. "Didn't he know any better? Don't he know any better now than to go on in this way half-tickled to death, thinking himself the happiest and the most blest of men?" The camp was ashamed of him.