“Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew--meaner ’n’ pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d _he_ be, ’n’ yeou tew?” There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but she grasped at the chance of substance behind it. “I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in her heart. “Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps yeh’d change yer teune.” “What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, with an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready to retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front. “Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be enough, I guess, to cook _his_ geuse, when th’ time comes.” “Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear yourself talk--to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your breath.” “Oh, _did_ I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk to th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’ fix things!” His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could not suspect. Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but something akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to be working with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part in the tragedy, then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that evening; the rushing, almost noiseless apparition which had startled them in the moonlight must have been the mare; it was coming from the direction of Tallman’s; it had a rider; who could that rider have been? and how did Milton know about it?--so the swift thoughts ran, in a chain which seemed luminous in the relief it brought to her. These two questions she could not answer--in her joy at the apparent exculpation of Seth it did not seem specially important that they should be answered--and she had self-possession enough to ask nothing about them. It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was now, without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly loathsome and repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died away, but a vague sense that mischief might be done by arousing his curiosity or apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke cautiously: “I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.”