The store-keeper, at a safe distance, remonstrated with both, to no purpose, and as the struggle could end only in freeing a murderous hand he rushed into the clearing, shouting the magical word "Fight!" with all the strength of his lungs. There was no immediate response, save that the affrighted rocks rang with the frenzied cry, and the motionless woods and the white moonlight seemed pervaded with myriads of strange, uncanny voices. Then a cautious shutter of a glassless window was opened, and through the narrow chink there fell a bar of red light, on which was clearly defined an inquiring head, like an inquisitively expressive silhouette. "They air a-fightin' yander ter the store, whar they air a-playin' of Old Sledge," said the master of the shanty, for the enlightenment of the curious within. And then he closed the shutter, and like the law-abiding citizen that he was betook himself to his broken rest. This was the only expression of interest elicited. A dreadful anxiety was astir in the store-keeper's thoughts. One of the men would certainly be killed; but he cared not so much for the shedding of blood in the abstract as that the deed should be committed on his premises at the dead of night; and there might be such a concatenation of circumstances, through the malefactor's willful perversion of the facts, that suspicion would fall upon him. The first circuit court ever held in the new county would be in session to-morrow; and the terrors of the law, deadly to an unaccustomed mind, were close upon him. Finding no help from without, he rushed back into the store, determined to make one more appeal to the belligerents. "Budd," he cried, "I'll holp ye ter hold Josiah, ef ye'll promise ye won't tech him ter hurt. He air crazed, through a-losin' of his truck. Say ye won't tech him ter hurt, an' I'll holp ye ter hold him." Josiah succumbed to their united efforts, and presently made no further show of resistance, but sank, still panting, into one of the chairs beside the inverted basket, and gazed blankly, with the eyes of a despairing, hunted creature, out at the sheen of the moonlight. "I ain't a-wantin' ter hurt nobody," said Wray, in a surly tone. "I never axed him ter play kyerds, nor ter bet, nor nuthin'. He l'arned me hisself, an' ef I hed los' stiddier of him he would be a-thinkin' now ez it's all right." "I'm a-goin' ter stand up ter what I done said, though," Josiah declared brokenly. "Ye needn't be afeard ez how I ain't a-goin' ter make my words true. Ef ye comes hyar at noon ter-morrer, ye'll git that thar deed, an' ye kin take the house an' land ez I an' my folks hev hed nigh on ter a hundred year. I ain't a-goin' ter fail o' my word, though."