Kinsard’s black eyes turned slowly from one speaker to the other. “If I had been Judge Gwinnan, I would have killed him for it,” he said, with his cigar held tightly between his fingers. “I would have spilt his brains, not his blood; and I would have had some scientific man to find the precise section of the brain structure which ideated that theory, and I would have had it comminuted, and vaporized, and transmuted into nothingness.” He spoke with calmness, as if these things were done every day for the vengeful in Tennessee. The granger took off his spectacles suddenly. He wanted to see this extraordinary young man, who he had an idea was too dangerous to be at large. The others looked at him with a less serious air. They had before heard him talk. “Well,” said a certain Mr. Forsey, also a young man, who had dropped upon the broad window-seat and lounged there, holding one knee in his clasped hands, and smoking too, “do you think Harshaw would have ventured to say it if there were no foundation for it,—if Gwinnan had done nothing to suggest such a proceeding? What motive had Harshaw?” He was a different manner of man. He had close-cut fair hair, a face broad across the cheek-bones and narrow at the chin, sparse whiskers and a light gray, wide-open eye. He had a sedulously neat appearance, a soft tread, and delicate white hands, in one of which he held his hat. “What motive? What motive for slander? Go to first principles. Gwinnan has got something that Harshaw wants.” Kinsard put his cigar into his mouth and went on talking as he held it fast between his teeth. “What fools we all are! We make laws against predatory beasts and decree their extermination. Pay a bounty for the scalps of the marauding men, I say,—the sharp fellows who ravage and pillage and have contrived so far to keep the law on their side. But pshaw!” he shifted his legs over the arm of the chair impatiently. “He can’t hurt Gwinnan. Talk can’t compass the impeachment of a judge. Gwinnan is one of the strongest men on the bench. Made the stiffest show that ever was seen when he ran against old Judge Burns, who had sat on the bench in that circuit till everybody thought he owned it. Old man could have mortgaged the bench,—could have raised money on it, I haven’t a doubt. Gwinnan couldn’t have beat Burns, if he hadn’t been above reproach and suspicion; it’s a tremendous thing to upset an old fixture like that.”