“Naw, Jerry, ’twarn’t my cow. I can’t keep nuthin’ long enough ter lose it; I hed traded her off to Ben Doaks.” There was no mistaking the patent disappointment on Rood’s face. One with far less sharp intelligence than Mink possessed might have descried that hot look in his eyes, as if they burned,—that vacillating glance which could fix on naught about him. The surprise of the moment deterred him from observing Mink, whose air of unconsciousness afterward afforded no ground for suspicion or fear. Rood pocketed his plug, and presently slouched off toward the tree where the marksmen were preparing for the shooting-match. Now and then there flitted to the door of the mill the figure of a stripling, all dusted with flour and meal, and with a torn white hat on his head. He wore ragged jeans trousers of an indeterminate hue, and an unbleached cotton shirt. When the men were strolling about, he slunk into the duskiness within. But when they were all intent upon the projected trial of skill, he crept shyly to the door, and looked out with a singularly blank, inexpressive gaze. “Hy’re ye, Tad!” called out Mink gayly. The young fellow stood for an instant staring; then, with a wide, foolish grin of recognition, disappeared among the shadows within. “Let the idjit be, Mink,” said old Griff, the miller, querulously,—“let him be.” He was a man of sixty years, perhaps, and bending beneath their weight. His white beard was like a patriarch’s, and his long hair hung down to meet it. He had a parchment-like skin, corrugated, and seeming darker for the contrast with his hair and beard. Beneath his bushy white eyebrows, restless, irritable eyes peered out. He was barefooted, as was the boy, and his poverty showed further in the patches on his brown jeans clothes. “Naw, I won’t,” said Mink irreverently. “I want ter see what Tad does when he skeets off an’ hides that-a-way.” He pressed into the mill, and the old man looked after him and cursed him in his beard. He swore with every breath he drew. “Go on, ye dad-burned fool—go on ter damnation! Ever sence that thar sneakin’ Mink hev been roun’ hyar,” he continued, addressing Price, “Tad ’pears weaker ’n ever. I can’t ’bide ter keep Tad in the house. He gits into one o’ his r-uproarious takin’s, an’ it looks like hell couldn’t hold him,—skeers the chill’n mighty nigh ter death. Yes, sir! my gran’chil’n. Daddy war shot by the revenuers, mammy died o’ the lung complaint, an’ the old man’s got ’em all ter take keer of—ten o’ ’em. An’ my nevy Tad, too, ez war born lackin’. An’ ev’y one of ’em’s got a stommick like a rat-hole—ye can’t fill it up. Yes, sir! The Lord somehows hev got his hand out in takin’ keer o’ me an’ mine, an’ he can’t git it in agin.”