"I don't hardly see how," he retorted. "Now I've done been robbed of my gun. What's become of my pappy's gun?" His mother hesitated, then confessed: "I done give it ter Clem." The son nodded his head. "Thet's what I 'lowed. Now thet gun b'longs ter me. I've done lawfully heired hit from my pap." He turned suddenly to Clem Rawlins, and his voice rang out in sharp and peremptory outburst. "Go git hit!" Rawlins rose in quick obedience, and went to his own corner whence he fetched the repeating rifle that had been the elder Spooner's. Newt stood before the fireplace, testing and loading the magazine, while his mother looked on in anxious scrutiny. Then the centenarian across the hearth roused up, lifting his ancient and withered face, in which the jaw muscles worked loosely and flabbily. "Who air thet feller?" he demanded in a quavering, accusing voice, gazing up without recognition at the tall, spare figure which towered over him. "Thet's little Newt," shouted the mother, bending her lips close to his ear. The old man sat foolishly blinking for a time as his wandering thoughts came back to a focus. Finally, he brandished his long staff and stormed weakly. "Ye hadn't oughter suffered yeself ter be penitentiaried. In my day no Spooner wouldn't 'a' done hit. Ye air the fust one thet's ever wore stripes...." "I wouldn't of gone thar nuther, ef my own kin hed a-stood by me," blazed the boy with an evil glitter in his eye. "Don't pay him no mind, Newt," hastily admonished his mother; "he hain't noways responsible. He's plumb fitty." "Why the hell don't he die?" demanded the youth, gazing down contemptuously on the withered and decaying figure. "I'm kinder tuckered out," he added a moment later. "I reckon I'll lay down." Such was Newt Spooner's home-coming. CHAPTER IX On the morning after the convict's return, in the hour when the mists still hung in wraith-like fogs over the slopes, Newt and the other men of the household gathered around the kitchen table while his mother and sister, maintaining their position of mere women, served them standing. They ate in sordid silence, stooping low over their plates and neglecting their forks.