"That's what I say," panted Jim Cal's voice in the darkness outside. He had come straight from the still instead of going with Jeff and the others to search; and for all his flesh he had overtaken his brothers. But there was none now to demand sardonically why he fled the seat of war and ran to the paternal shelter for re-enforcements. "Ef folks go nosin' around whar they ain't wanted, sometimes they git what they don't like," he concluded. Judith, very pale, had parted her lips to utter words of indignant defence, and denial of this broad imputation, but before she could speak Huldah Spiller irrupted into the room, her red curls flying, her bodice clutched about her in such a fashion as to suggest she had been undressing when the news reached her. The mountain woman with temperament is reduced to the outlets of such occasions as these, or revival seasons and funerals; and Huldah Spiller, having abandoned the protesting Iley with her babies, whom the mother could not leave alone, meant to make the most of the occasion. "You-all ain't got no right to talk the way you do about Creed," the red-haired girl burst out. "Him and me's been friends ever sence I went to Hepzibah, and there ain't a better man walks the earth. Ef he done anything to Blatch hit was becaze Blatch laywayed him an' jumped on him, an' he had to. Oh, Lord!" and she began to weep, "I wish't my daddy was here--I jest wish Pap Spiller was here. Pore Creed! Ef you-all git yo' hands on him, mad thisaway, the Lord knows what will be did!" Jephthah regarded his postulant daughter-in-law from under lowered, bushy brows. "Kin you make her hush?" he inquired of Wade. "I ain't got no interest in makin' her hush nor makin' her holler," returned Wade contemptuously. Dishonoured before his clan, his male dignity sadly shorn, his woman shrieking out the wrongs and excellences of another man--and that man a young and well-favoured enemy--his bitterness may be forgiven. "Fetch the lantern," ordered Jephthah briefly. "We-all have got to git over thar and see to this business." "Well, I'll hush--but I'm goin' along," volleyed Huldah. "Le's us go too, Jude," pleaded Cliantha Lusk in a trembling whisper. "I'm scared to be left here in the house with the men all gone. He might take a notion to come and raid the place and kill us. They do thataway in feud times. My gran' mammy----" "Do hush!" choked Judith. But she hurried out in the wake of the departing men, Cliantha clinging to one arm, Pendrilla to the other. They left the doors open, the candles flaring, and nobody to guard but the toothless old hound who slept and snored on the chip pile.