“Now with Hime so wrought up and all that, Klebe ought to have passed along, but he thought he had a tongue-walloper’s license, bein’ Coll Willard’s boy, and started in and called Hime ev’rything he could lay tongue to and then pitched into the Look fam’ly, root and branch in general; called old Look an ignorant clod-hopper, and said that sendin’ Phin to college was about like tryin’ to gold-plate an Early-Rose potater. And then he barked right out there in public--bein’ dizzy-headed by that time, I reckon--that all Myry Austin had cared about Hime, anyway, was to watch him perform ’round her, same as boys spit on a stick and throw it into a mill-pond for Towser to fetch back. And when Hime still set there takin’ it, Klebe was startin’ in on things that was worse still, when Hime came over his waggon wheel like a pick’rel after a skip-bait and--well, when ’twas over Klebe Willard had marks on his face that will always be there. Hime picked him up--everyone was too scared to mess in--and lugged him on his back to Judge Willard’s and throwed him over the fence about where he boosted the old man to-day, and hollered: ‘Here’s something to feed to your cat!’ Then he came back and got into his team before old Constable Denslow had got so he could speak. “‘I shall have to arrest you, Hime,’ he says, ‘as I reckon you’ve killed him!’ “‘Arrest hell!’ says Hime. ‘I tried to kill him!’ And he slashed old Denslow across the face with his whip and went out of the village, hootin’ and gallopin’ his horse, with eighteen hundred or two thousand dollars owin’ to people ’round here. And since that night Hime Look ain’t been seen in this village till yesterday, and from what was dropped by word o’ mouth ’tween him and Phin, it’s pretty plain he ain’t been heard from by his fam’ly, either.” He checked his garrulous narration in order to relight his pipe. “It’s been a hard blow for Squire Phin, it all has,” observed Uncle Buck. “Just finishing college when it happened, and havin’ the record of bein’ the smartest critter there! He had the chance to go into a big city law-office, but there was poor old Seth knocked flat’s a flounder, his name on notes to wholesalers who’d sold to Hime, and feelin’ holden for all the other debts. “Phin done what few boys would do. He come home, put his shoulder to the wheel and taught school and studied law between-whiles--and, well, we all know how he’s worked it out.” “There was more than the money side of it, too, that he had to face,” broke in Amazeen. “Seems as if I’ve heard hints that he was pretty fierce took in a certain quarter,” observed Brickett, with a sly look.