"Why, now, my big bull o' Bashan, ye hev got ter make that statement under oath with full partic'lars,--names, dates, and place!" He rose up on the opposite side of the monkey stove, with the lifter in his hand, with which he gesticulated imperatively. Kenniston could hardly repress his impatience. "Of course, Mr. Ross, of course,--all in due season," he said irritably. "But abuse the authorities, in season an' out, an' 'low the devil will ketch the officer, in due course o' jestice, 'fore the officer'll ketch the malefactor. I ain't a-goin' ter lose you, Mr. Durham, ye bet high on that!" he added, turning to Taft. "Mr. Taft expects to swear to the facts, of course," said Kenniston. He paused abruptly, meditating a remonstrance with the tumultuous brute; but Ross's very vulgarity, his clamorous brutality, the impossibility of reaching through his hardened exterior any sensitiveness, or pride, or sense of decorum, or whatever sanction may control the heart of a man who is a gentleman in jeans, gave him an advantage over a man of breeding which no culture could compass. Kenniston could not cope with him; his training had prepared him for no such encounter. Only Taft's great sonorous voice could overbear the deputy's words, which sounded in his first utterance with the disjointed effect of Christmas firecrackers enlivening the booming of Christmas guns. "I'll make oath ter statements ez ter date an' person, but not place,--I hev no call ter drag other folks inter sech. I dunno ez they fired the hotel; I only heard 'em threat it." "But why?" demanded Kenniston eagerly. "Deviltry,--deviltry, o' course," protested Ross. He had contrived to smirch his face in the careless handling of the poker of the monkey stove, which added a certain grotesque effect to his appearance, if one were in the mood to be amused by it. Kenniston's mood was far from such influences. "I must ask you to be quiet, sir," he said, with acridity. "Ye must?" sneered Rodolphus Ross. "An' who war that ez 'lowed ef the local force war so 'torpid,'--_torpid_, ye hed it,--ye'd hev up private detectives from Bretonville ter settle the hash o' these kentry varmints?" He threw up his eyebrows almost to the smirches obliquely laid across his forehead, laughed with a gleam of white teeth and an intent widening of the dark eyes, the whole facial expression gone in an instant. "Waal, we ain't 'torpid' no longer. 'Wake up, snakes!' Now, old buck, answer my questions, an' tell me why they warn't willin' ter let Mr. Kenniston build his hotel in the Cove."