"You needn't go into no particulars about whar you looked in, nor what you seed, nor call out no names of them you seed," cut in the old man's voice, low and menacing; and around the corner of the house Jim Cal, where he had stolen up to listen, trembled through all the soft bulk of his body like a jelly; and into his white face the angry blood rushed. "Wish ye didn't know nothin? Yes, and you'll wish't it wuss'n that befo' yo're done with it," he muttered under his breath. "I don't intend to use that or any other information against a neighbour and a friend," Creed went on doggedly. "But they can't make me leave the Turkey Tracks. I'm here to stay. I came with a work to do, and I mean to do it or die trying." The old man's head was sunk a bit on his breast, so that the great black beard rose up of itself and shadowed his lower face. "Mighty fine--mighty fine," he murmured in its voluminous folds. "Ef they is one thing finer than doin' what you set out to do, hit's to die a-tryin'. The sort of sentiments you have on hand now is the kind I l'arned myself out of the blue-backed speller when I was a boy. I mind writin' em out big an' plain after the teacher's copy." Creed looked about him for Judith. He had failed with the old man, but she would understand--she would know. His hungry heart counselled him that she was his best friend, and he glanced wistfully at the door through which she had vanished; but it remained obstinately closed as he made his farewells, got dispiritedly to his mule and away. Judith watched his departure from an upper window, smitten to the heart by the drooping lines of the figure, the bend of the yellow head. Inexorably drawn she came down the steep stairs, checking, halting at every step, her breast heaving with the swift alternations of her mood. The door of the boys' room swung wide; her swift glance descried Wade's figure just vanishing into the grove at the edge of the clearing. The tall, gaunt old man brooded in his chair, his black eyes fixed on vacancy, the pipe in his relaxed fingers dropped to his knee. Up toward the Jim Cal cabin Iley, one baby on her hip and two others clinging to her skirts, dodged behind a convenient smoke-house, and peered out anxiously. Judith stepped noiselessly into the porch; the old man did not turn his head. Her quick eye noted the paper Creed had dropped. She stooped and picked it up unobserved, slipped into the kitchen, studying its lines of figures which meant nothing to her, caught up her sunbonnet and, glancing warily about, made an exit through the back door. She ran through a long grape-arbour where great wreathing arms of Virgin's Bower aided to shut the green tunnel in from sight, then took a path where tall bushes screened her, making for the short cut which she guessed Creed would take.