The dogs lifted their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient gratitude astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly, and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's face. He threw himself into his chair with a heavy sigh, and desisted for a time from the unaccustomed duty of clearing away the dishes after supper. “An' 'ain't ye got the gumption ter sense what Eveliny sot the candle in the winder fur?” his brother Timothy demanded, abruptly--“ez a sign ter that thar durned Abs'lom Kittredge.” The other two men turned their heads and looked at the speaker with a poignant intensity of interest. “I 'lowed ez much when I seen that light ez I war a-kemin' home las' night,” he continued; “it shined spang down the slope acrost the ruver an' through all the laurel; it looked plumb like a star that hed fell ter yearth in that pitch-black night. I dun-no how I s'picioned it, but ez I stood thar an' gazed I knowed somebody war a-standin' an' gazin' too on the foot-bredge a mite ahead o' me. I couldn't see him, an' he couldn't turn back an' pass me, the bredge bein' too narrer. He war jes obligated ter go on. I hearn him breathe quick; then--pit-pat, pit-pat, ez he walked straight toward that light. An' he be 'bleeged ter hev hearn me, fur arter I crost I stopped. Nuthin'. Jes' a whisper o' wind, an' jes' a swishin' from the ruver. I knowed then he hed turned off inter the laurel. An' I went on, a-whistlin' ter make him 'low ez I never s'picioned nuthin'. An' I kem inter the house an' tole dad ez he'd better be a-lookin' arter Eveliny, fur I b'lieved she war a-settin' her head ter run away an' marry Abs'lom Kittredge.” “Waal, I ain't right up an' down sati'fied we oughter done what we done,” exclaimed Stephen, fretfully. “It don't 'pear edzacly right fur three men ter fire on one.” [Illustration: Old Joel Quimbey 081] Old Joel Quimbey, in his arm-chair in the chimney-corner, suddenly lifted his head--a thin head with fine white hair, short and sparse, upon it. His thin, lined face was clear-cut, with a pointed chin and an aquiline nose. He maintained an air of indignant and rebellious grief, and had hitherto sat silent, a gnarled and knotted hand on either arm of his chair. His eyes gleamed keenly from under his heavy brows as he turned his face upon his sons. “How could we know thar warn't but one, eh?” He had not been a candidate for justice of the peace for nothing; he had absorbed something of the methods and spirit of the law through sheer propinquity to the office. “We-uns wouldn't be persumed ter _know_.” And he ungrudgingly gave himself all the benefit of the doubt that the law accords.