“I don't know what you are trying to git at, an' I don't care,” Hoag blustered. “I don't know what your present object is, what sort of an ax you got to grind; but I'll tell you what I think, Paul, an' you kin smoke it in your pipe if you want to. Somebody round here has kept you posted. You know how the land lays, an' have made up your mind to turn preacher, I reckon--if you ain't already one--an' you think it will be a fine card to make these damn fools here in the backwoods think you really _was_ ready to go to the scaffold, an' the like o' that. But the truth will leak out. Sooner or later folks--even the silliest of 'em--will git onto your game. You can't look _me_ square in the eye, young man, an' tell _me_ that you don't know Jeff Warren didn't die, an' that when he married your mammy an' moved away the case ag'in' you was dismissed. Huh, I ain't as green as a gourd!” Paul started, stared incredulously at the speaker, his mouth falling open till his white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He leaned forward, his breath coming and going audibly, his broad chest swelling. He laid his hand on Hoag's shoulder and bore down on it heavily. Hoag felt it quivering as if it were charged with an electric current. Paul was trying to speak, trying to be calm. He swallowed; his lips moved automatically; he put his disengaged hand on Hoag's other shoulder and forced him to look at him. He shook him. In his face was the light of a great nascent joy. “Don't say he's alive unless--my God, unless it's true!” he cried, shaking Hoag again. “That would be the act of a fiend in human shape. I couldn't stand it. Speak, speak, speak, man! Don't you understand? Speak! Is it true--is it possible that--” Paul's voice broke in a great welling sob of excitement and his quivering head began to sink. Hoag was quite taken aback. This was genuine; of that he was convinced. “Thar's no use gittin' so worked up,” he said. “Jeff is sound an' well. I'm sorry I talked like I did, for I see you must 'a' been in the dark, an'--” He went no further. Paul had removed his hands. A light was on his face that seemed superhuman. He raised his eyes to the sky. He swerved toward the side of the road like a man entranced till he reached the fence, and there he rested his head on his arms and stood bowed, still, and silent. “Huh, this is a purty pickle!” Hoag said to himself. He stood nonplussed for several minutes, and then advanced to Paul, treading the ground noiselessly till he was close to him. And then he heard the young man muttering an impassioned prayer. “I thank thee, O God, I thank thee! O, blessed Father! O, merciful Creator, this--this is thy reward!”