Marcella was spinning again with feverish industry; the wheel whirled fast,—so fast, and its whir was continuous and loud. “Naw, sir; they don’t dare call _me_ ter account ter the law fur killin’ Teck Jepson. _Naw, sir!_” Eli Strobe reiterated, with a deep, rotund voice. Suddenly, with an incidental manner and a clear, casual glance, “Whar did they bury him, Andy?” The young man sat mute and dumfounded. The blood rushed violently to his head, and the landscape reeled before him. He had scant time to realize the emergency, as the recognition of the state of affairs dawned upon his bewildered intelligence, and to canvass within himself what answer he had best make. “I dunno,” he faltered. “I be so constant over ter Chilhowee,” he added, gathering his faculties. “Ain’t ye never hearn, though, whar they buried him?” Eli persisted, with growing pertinacity. “I didn’t ’low ez ’twar you-uns ez preached the fun’ral sermon,” with an angry sneer and his side-glance of bovine surliness. “Why,” said Marcella, with a matter-of-course manner, “I’ll tell ye: they buried him up yander in that thar leetle buryin’-groun’ by his old cabin, whar his folkses’ graves be.” Her father fixed a keen, suspicious eye on her. “Ye didn’t know yestiddy,” he commented severely. Not even the crafty watchfulness of mania, not Andy Longwood’s sanity, could detect aught amiss or unnatural in her tones and manner as she drew out her thread, and once more set the wheel a-whirling before she replied. “Naw; Clem Sanders ’twar ez told it ter me, when he kem ter inquire arter ye, las’ night. I axed him.” Andy Longwood understood now that the family systematically agreed with Eli Strobe and humored his strange delusion, lest they might excite him to his detriment, and that these were the directions of the physician. He did not fail to note that it was with his rival’s name that she sought to aid her forlorn enterprise, and that she no longer turned to him for help. “I reckon Clem an’ nobody else would hev been sech a fool ez me,” he angrily reproached himself. He was eager enough to go now, but his liberty had fled. The invalid had fixed earnest eyes upon him, and showed a continuous desire to talk; he could only sit and listen, with the cruel consciousness of how every distraught word grated upon the tender heart of Marcella. He realized now how she had sought to shield from notice the calamity of her father’s loss of mind, and how he had thwarted her.