"I don't," said Tenney, "stan' any man's interferin' with me. I give ye fair warnin' not to meddle nor make." "Then," said Raven, "we've both got our warning. I've had yours and you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's what you are." Tenney, in the surprise and mortification of this, barked out at him: "Don't ye call me a cuss. I'm a professin' Christian." "Stuff!" said Raven. "That's all talk. I wonder a man of your sense shouldn't see how ridiculous it is. You're not a Christian. When you stand up in meeting and testify, you're simply a hypocrite. No, I don't call you a Christian. I call you a scamp, on the way to being locked up." Tenney's mind leaped back a space. "You're tryin' to throw me off the track," he announced. "Ye can't do it. When I come up the road you an' Eugene Martin was out there an' you knocked him down. I see ye. You horsewhipped him. Now if it's anybody's business to horsewhip Eugene Martin, it's mine. What business is it o' yourn horsewhippin' a man that's hangin' round another man's wife unless----" "Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney might as well think him a devil of a fellow, quick to act and hard to hold. "It happens to be my way. I don't propose taking back talk from anybody of his sort--or yours. He's a mean cuss, too, Tenney, ready to think every man's as bad as he is--a foul-mouthed fool. And"--he hesitated here and spoke with an emphasis that did strike upon Tenney's hostile attention--"he is the kind of cheap fellow that would like nothing better than to insult a woman. That was what he sat down by your wife for, last night. That was why I made an excuse to get him away from her. I wouldn't allow him within ten feet of a woman of my own family. You ought to be mighty glad I looked out for yours." Tenney was in a coil of doubt. Suddenly he glanced round at Tira, standing there in the path, her eyes upon one and the other as they spoke. Raven would not willingly have looked at her. He felt her presence in his inmost heart; he knew how cold she must be in the wintry air with nothing about her shoulders and the breeze strong enough to stir those rings of hair about her forehead. But she must suffer it while he raked Tenney by the only language Tenney knew. "But here be you," cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole 'em off to run away with you." "I have explained all that once," said Raven. "You'll have to take it or leave it." At that instant Tira stepped forward. She gave a little cry. "You've hurt your foot!"