"Uh-huh, I thort so," nodded the old man bitterly, as they yet stood mute. "Ain't got a word to say for yo'selves. No, and they ain't a word to be said. Yo' sons in my house. I was thar--I was standin' with ye about this business. Why couldn't this be named to me? What call had ye to sneak around me--to make a fool o' me, an' shame me?" He waited. Receiving no response, he concluded as he got to the mule's back, "You do me thisaway once mo'--jest once mo'--and hit will be a plenty." With that he gave Pete the rein, and the mule's receding heels flung dust in the dismayed countenances he left behind him. Chapter XV Council of War The Turrentine clan was gathering for consultation, Judith knew that. It was Sunday, and much of this unwonted activity passed as the ordinary Sabbath day coming and going. But there was a steady tendency of tall, soft-stepping, slow-spoken, keen-eyed males toward old Jephthah's quarters, and Judith had got dinner for the two long-limbed, black-avised Turrentine brothers, Hawk and Chantry, from over in Rainy Gap; and old Turrentine Broyles, a man of Jephthah's age, had ridden in from Broyles's Mill that morning. With the natural freedom of movement that Sunday offers, information from the Card neighbourhood came in easily. Inevitably Judith learned all the details of last night's raid; and everybody on the place knew that Creed Bonbright was alive, and that he was not even seriously wounded. He had been observed through the open door of Nancy's cabin moving about the rooms inside. Arley Kittridge declared that he had seen Bonbright, in the grey of early morning, his head bound up and his left arm in a sling, cross from Nancy's house to his office and back again, alone. Sunday brought the Jim Cals home, too. Iley, humiliated and savage, bearing in her breast galling secret recollections of Pap Spiller's animadversions on her management of Huldah, raged all day with the toothache, and a pariah dog might have pitied the lot of the fat man. All day, as Judith cooked, and washed her dishes, and entertained her visitors, the events of last night's raid were present with her. When at the table one of the boys stretched a hand to receive the food she had prepared, she looked at it with an inward shuddering, wondering, was this the hand that fired the shot? All day as she talked to her women visitors of patchwork patterns, or the making of lye soap, as she admired their babies and sympathised with their ailments, her mind was busy with the inquiry what part she should take in the final inevitable crisis. She remembered with a remorse that was almost shame how, at their last interview, she had plucked back from Creed her rescuing hand in jealous anger. That big mother kindness that there was in her spoke for him, pleaded loud for his life, when her hot passionate heart would have had revenge for his slight.