“There’s the dockyments. I want to warn you right at the outset that you ain’t goin’ to come none of your gum-games on me, the way they tell of you actin’ with some of them that come to you for law. My mind is as set as old Pisgy itself.” She brought her work-stained hand down on the chair rail with a vehemence that made it creak. “I’m not going to have any fight with you, Esther,” he replied, smiling into her hostile eyes. “But you do surprise me about ’Caje. I thought he was as steady-going as a stone boat.” She nipped her lips spitefully. “Always a hardworking man, ’Caje has been,” the lawyer went on; “has stuck to his work a little speck too close, maybe.” “Look here, Squire Phineas Look,” she broke in, “this ain’t gittin’ on about that _di_-vose. You needn’t try to beat about the bush.” “Let’s see!” he mused. “Poor, crazy Ben Haskell’s girl, ’Liza, is teaching in the Dunham district, I believe. And Ben in the asylum these five years! Is she as pretty as her mother was before her?” “High-headed snippet,” sniffed Mrs. Dunham. “But I’ll show her!” The Squire set his arms on the table, his elbows squared, and a quizzical smile in the wrinkles about his eyes. “’Caje Dunham is a good neighbour, is honest and pays his bills, Esther,” he said, “but do you think for one moment that pretty ’Liza Haskell wants that old, callous-fisted, round-shouldered husband of yours hanging around her?” The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she glared at him with malice in her gaze. “A school agent in a district has to putter around the school house more or less,” he went on. “If he has been too neighbourly I’ll talk with him about it. But you’re not going to drag an innocent girl through any scandal, Esther, just to satisfy some grudge that you’ve hatched up in your own mind.” “So she has run to you with her budget, has she?” demanded the woman, her expression still more malevolent. “No, I haven’t seen ’Lize Haskell for months,” said the Squire with candour. “Oh, _she_ ain’t the one I mean,” Mrs. Dunham snapped. “I mean the pompous Queen o’ Sheby that was sittin’ in that school house yistiddy when I called there to give the little fool her come-uppance right before her scholars.” She nipped her lips and looked at him so spitefully and meaningly that a flush crept up from under his collar. He knew that the motherless girl had become a protégé of Sylvena Willard’s at the time that Ben Haskell had been taken to the madhouse. “No wonder you’re ’shamed,” the woman went on angrily. “You all of you are in the plot ag’inst me. I give her her earful, all right, Willard so high and mighty, or no Willard. That teacher and her, the both of ’em, got it straight from _me_.” “Do you mean to say that you went to the school house and abused that girl before Sylvena Willard?” demanded the Squire, standing up and glowering down on her. But her spirit was equal to his, for her anger was bitterer.