The farmer spoke with more animation. “D'ye suppose I care a picayune what _they_ say or do?” he demanded. “Not I! But when a man's own kith and kin turn agin him, into the bargain—” he left the sentence unfinished, and shook his head to indicate the impossibility of such a situation. “Has Jeff—then—” Mrs. Beech began to ask. “Yes—Jeff!” thundered the farmer, striking his fist on the arm of the chair. “Yes—by the Eternal!—Jeff!” When Abner Beech swore by the Eternal we knew that things were pretty bad. His wife put the bowl down on a chair, and seated herself in another. “What's Jeff been doin'?” she asked. “Why, where d'ye suppose he was last night, 'n' the night before that? Where d'ye suppose he is this minute? They ain't no mistake about it, Lee Watkins saw 'em with his own eyes, and ta'nted me with it. He's down by the red bridge—that's where he is—hangin' round that Hagadorn gal!” Mrs. Beech looked properly aghast at the intelligence. Even to me it was apparent that the unhappy Jeff might better have been employed in committing any other crime under the sun. It was only to be expected that his mother would be horrified. “I never could abide that Lee Watkins,” was what she said. The farmer did not comment on the relevancy of this. “Yes,” he went on, “the daughter of mine enemy, the child of that whining, backbiting old scoundrel who's been eating his way into me like a deer-tick for years—the whelp that I owe every mean and miserable thing that's ever happened to me—yes, of all living human creatures, by the Eternal! it's _his_ daughter that that blamed fool of a Jeff must take a shine to, and hang around after!” “He'll come of age the fourteenth of next month,” remarked the mother, tentatively. “Yes—and march up and vote the Woolly-head ticket. I suppose that's what'll come next!” said the farmer, bitterly. “It only needed that!” “And it was you who got her the job of teachin' the school, too,” put in Mrs. Beech. “That's nothing to do with it,” Abner continued. “I ain't blamin' her—that is, on her own account. She's a good enough gal so far's I know. But everything and everybody under that tumble-down Hagadorn roof ought to be pizen to any son of mine! _That's_ what I say! And I tell you this, mother”—the farmer rose, and spread his broad chest, towering over the seated woman as he spoke—“I tell you this; if he ain't got pride enough to keep him away from that house—away from that gal—then he can keep away from _this_ house—away from me!” The wife looked up at him mutely, then bowed her head in tacit consent.