“Oh, you!” exclaimed Mrs. Vaiden, throwing out her large hand at him in a gesture of mingled embarrassment and delight. “As if I’d take it, after Laviny’s actin’ up this a-way!” He did not reply, and presently she broke out, angrily, with: “The huzzy! The ungrateful, deceitful jade! To treat a body so. How do we know whether he’s got anything to keep a wife on? I’ll admit, though, he was alwus genteel-dressed. I do think, Bart, you might ’a’ took pattern ’n that. ’Twa’n’t like as if you wa’n’t able to wear good clo’es—an’ Laviny liked such things.” “I wish you’d ’a’ told me a good spell ago what she liked, Mrs. Vaiden.” “Well, that’s so. There ain’t much use ’n lockin’ the stable door after the horse ’s gone. Oh, that makes me think about your offerin’ me that buggy—’s if I w’u’d!” “I guess you’ll have to. I’m goin’ to leave on the train, an’ I’ll order it sent to you.” “Oh, you! Why, where you goin’, Bart?” “I’m goin’ to follow _him_!” he thundered, bringing his fist down on the table in a way that made every dish leap out of its place. “I ain’t goin’ to hurt him—unless talk hurts—but I’m goin’ to say some _things_ to him. I ain’t had a thought for three year that that girl ain’t b’en in! I ain’t made a plan that she ain’t b’en in. I’ve laid awake night after night just too happy to sleep. An’ now to have a—a _thing_ like him take her from me in one month. But that ain’t the worst!” he burst out, passionately. “We don’t know how he’ll treat her, an’ she’ll be too proud to complain—” “I can’t see why you care how he treats her,” said Mrs. Vaiden, “after the way she’s treated you.” “No,” he answered, with a look that ought to have crushed her, “I didn’t s’pose you c’u’d see. I didn’t expect you to see that, or anything else but your own feelin’s—the way the thing affex you. But that’s what I’m goin’ to follow him for, Mrs. Vaiden. An’ when I find him—I’m goin’ to tell him”—there was an awful calm in his tone now—“that if he ever misuses her, now that he’s married her, I’ll kill him. I’ll shoot him down like a dawg!” “My Lord!” broke in Mrs. Vaiden, with a new thought. “What if he ain’t married her! She never said so ’n her letter. Oh, Bart!” beginning to weep hysterically. “Mebbe you c’u’d get her back.” He leaped to his feet panting like an animal; his great breast swelled in and out swiftly, his hands clenched, his eyes burned at her. “What!” he said. “Do you _dare_? _Her mother!_ Oh, you—you—God! but I wish you was a man!” The whistle of a coming train broke across the morning stillness. He turned, seized his hat and crushed it on his head. Then he came back and took up the chair in which he had been sitting. “Mrs. Vaiden,” he said, quietly, “d’ you see this chair? Well, if he ain’t married her—” With two or three movements of his powerful wrists he wrenched the chair into as many pieces and dropped them on the floor. * * * * *