Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion. "I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger," she said. "An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the Irishman. "Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool. Boys is allers powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween--nary man nor boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all sich like. Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap, and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I _would_ be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle _then_, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in _his_ face. It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'. I mean to call his attention to some things then. He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families thar, I 'low." Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition. Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt. Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle. "I don't want to run away from him. He'll think I've backed out," he said, hesitatingly.