The next moment he was reeling from a powerful blow planted between the eyes. It even felled the stalwart constable, for it was so suddenly dealt. But Jubal Tynes was on his feet in an instant, rushing forward with a bull-like bellow. Once more he measured his length upon the ground,--close to the anvil this time, for the position of all the group had changed in the fracas. He did not rise again; the second blow was struck with the ponderous sledge. As the men hastened to lift him, they were much hindered by the ecstatic capers of the idiot brother, who seemed to have been concealed in the shop. The prisoner made no attempt at flight, although, in the confusion, he was forgotten for the time by the officers, and had some chance of escape. He appeared frightened and very meek; and when he saw that there was blood upon the sledge, and they said brains, too, he declared that he was sorry he had done it. "_I_ done it!" cried the idiot joyfully. "Jube sha'n't fight 'Vander! _I_ done it!" and he was so boisterously grotesque and wild that the men lost their wits while he was about; so they turned him roughly out of the forge, and closed the doors upon him. At last he went away, although for a time he beat loudly upon the shutter, and called piteously for Evander. It was a great opportunity for old Dr. Patton, who lived six miles down the valley, and zealously he improved it. He often felt that in this healthful country, where he was born, and where bucolic taste and local attachment still kept him, he was rather a medical theorist than a medical practitioner, so few and slight were the demands upon the resources of his science. He was as one who has long pondered the unsuggestive details of the map of a region, and who suddenly sees before him its glowing, vivid landscape. "A beautiful fracture!" he protested with rapture,--"a beautiful fracture!" Through all the country-side were circulated his cheerful accounts of patients who had survived fracture of the skull. Among the simple mountaineers his learned talk of the trephine gave rise to the startling report that he intended to put a linchpin into Jubal Tynes's head. It was rumored, too, that the unfortunate man's brains had "in an' about leaked haffen out;" and many freely prompted Providence by the suggestion that "ef Jube war ready ter die it war high time he war taken," as, having been known as a hasty and choleric man, it was predicted that he would "make a most survigrus idjit." "Cur'ous enough ter me ter find out ez Jube ever hed brains," commented Mrs. Ware. "'Twar well enough ter let some of 'em leak out ter prove it. He hev never showed he hed brains no other way, ez I knows on. Now," she added, "somebody oughter tap 'Vander's head, an' mebbe they'll find him pervided, too. Wonders will never cease! Nobody would hev accused Jube o' sech. Folks'll hev ter respec' them brains. 'Vander done him that favior in splitting his head open."