“Sech talk ez Teck’s air the reason they hed ter hev a change o’ venue,” said Strobe, presently. “Stiddier tryin’ Baintree in Colb’ry, his county town, they hed ter take him ter Glaston, ’kase folks in this county war all so set agin him the court ’lowed he couldn’t git a fair trial hyar.” “I reckon his folks hev been powerful put ter it ter live along all this time,” remarked Bowles. “I know they never planted none the fust year,” rejoined Strobe. “Waal, at fust they ’lowed it would be soon over, an’ they jes’ stirred thar stumps ter do everything fur the trial, an’ they thunk o’ nuthin’ else. Then nex’ year they hed ter pay suthin’ ter them lawyers, whether they sp’ilt thar case or no.” “Jake war a-tellin’ me the t’ other day,” said Strobe, “how thankful he war ter some o’ thar neighbors, ez hed holped ’em along in thar troubles. Ye know he air so meek-spoken, an’ perlite, an’ sech now; an’ he jes’ makes hisse’f ez small ez he sets by the fire, an’ he grins afore ye kin speak ter him, an’—I dunno.” He relinquished suddenly the descriptive effort. “An’ I jes’ spoke up, an’ I say, ‘I’d be obleeged ter ye, Jake, now that the law hev let ye off, ef ye wouldn’t _look_ so durned guilty.’” “What’d he say?” demanded Bowles. “Waal, the critter changed suddint. An’ he say, ‘I know folks ’low I be guilty, an’ it makes me look guilty till I plumb _feel_ guilty.’” The constable’s portly form had a burly shadow behind it, as he rose from his seat on the rock, for the moon was well up now, glistening through the needles of the pines, and casting a broad refulgent sheen upon the empty road; the blades of Indian corn gleamed, as they stirred in the breeze. Bowles had unhooked his arms from the fence rail, and the two men took their way together to the little cabin in the notch. The conformation of the great slopes above it was such as to show a neighboring peak standing definite and dark against the evening sky. Adown the wooded steeps the shadows gloomed. The ground fell away from the door in an abrupt descent, and through the uninclosed passage between the two rooms, which constituted the house, could be seen a far-reaching defile of crags and sombre purple ranges in the elusive blue distances. The little cabin, its ridge-pole in a slant against the sky, with its forlorn shanty of a barn, its few bee-gums awry along the rickety rail fence, its scanty scaffolds of tobacco and drying fruit, seemed all the more meagre for the splendid affluence of the scene spread out before it on every side. “I kin see fifty mile an’ furder in three States,” Bowles, its owner, some-timer boasted. “I’d ruther see fewer bushes an’ mo’ cornfield,” his wife as often retorted.