"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some." Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief. Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston himself for marksmanship. "Him and her--who?" he asked, raising his dull eyes to Billy's tormenting face. "Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his shack; I listened outside the winder once--he reads to her and tells her things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss her." Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling. Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain and heart. He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow--then he looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected houses--nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen happenings were going on--he must understand. "You saw--him--kiss--her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees. "Yep," Billy whipped his dramatic sense into action. He arose and strode before Jude with Gaston's own manner. "This way. His arms out, and him a-laughing like, and Joyce she kinder run inter his arms and he held her, like this--." The close embrace of the childish gesture seemed to strangle Jude, and he gave a muffled cry. This acted like a round of applause upon Billy. "Yep, and he kept on hugging and kissing her like this--" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand trembling with new-born emotion. "Take that, you impish brat," he had said, "and more like it if you stand there another minute with your lying capers." "They ain't lies," wailed Billy, edging away and nursing his smarting face; "he did! he did! It was in his shack--I saw 'em!" "Get out," yelled Jude, glowering darkly; "and you tell that to any one else and," he came nearer to the shrinking child, "I swear I'll choke yer till yer can't speak." So changed was Jude that Billy trembled before him. "I won't," he whispered, "I swear I won't, Jude; don't--don't hit me again; I won't tell." He was gone, but the old Jude was gone also. The new man finished the gun cleaning, his breath coming hard and fast meanwhile, and then, taking the gun with him, he went into the deep woods on the northern edge of the village. All the rest of the day he watched Gaston's shack from a distance; as the darkness drew on he crept closer. Joyce did not come near the place, and Gaston himself only returned when the night was well advanced.