"Well, Jerry used to be in love with Juno, but she would never have anything to do with him and he never would let her have anything to do with anybody else. He shot one boy, and shot at another, and he has always sworn that he would kill the man she married." "Nonsense!" he said, but going home that night Doctor Jim carried the gun where he could get at it quickly. "My God!" he muttered with grim humor; "no wonder Juno didn't want me to come." It was only a few days later that Doctor Jim came out of Lum Chapman's house and paused in the path looking up Wolf Run. Jerry Lipps's sister lived half a mile above and he had just heard that her little daughter was down with the fever. Jerry might be staying with the sister, but Doctor Jim's duty was now up there and, in spite of the warnings given him, he did not hesitate. The woman stared when he told who he was and why he had come, but she nodded and pointed to the bed where the child lay. He put his pistol on the bed, thrust a thermometer into the little girl's mouth and began taking her pulse. A hand swept the pistol from the bed and, when he turned around, about all he could think was: "How extraordinary!" Jerry, red with rage and drink, was at the kitchen door fumbling at the butt of his pistol, while his sister had Doctor Jim's gun levelled at her brother's heart. "You can't tech him," she said coolly, "an' if you pull that gun out an inch furder I'll kill ye as shore as thar's a God in heaven." And at that moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and left undone, and wound up: "You never was wuth Juno's little finger, an' you ain't wuth _his_ little finger-nail now. Take his gun, Pleas. Take him to the State line, an' don't you boys let him come back agin until he's stopped drinkin', got a suit o' clothes, an' a job." "Why, Mandy," said Pleasant, "hit's kind o' funny, but Lum an' Jay an' me fixed hit up about an hour ago that we aimed to do that very thing. I seed Doc a-comin' up hyeh, an' was afeard I mought be too late: but if I'd 'a' knowed you was hyeh I wouldn't 'a' worried." Again Doctor Jim was thinking, "How extraordinary!" but this time how extraordinary it was that the man really meant to shoot him. Somehow he began to understand.