ruse to win his rival’s rifle. “’Feard I’d hurt Clem,” he said with a sneer, despite his quivering lip. Perhaps it was the idea that violence was expected of him, which her precautions first suggested to him,—for the bravado and bloody-mindedness of his conversation had been utterly without intention,—that determined him upon his course. “Naw, naw, Marcelly,” he said, half aloud and mournfully shaking his head, “ef not me—nobody.” He leaned down as he spoke, and drew from his boot-leg a glittering steely flash; he looked around with a quick, apprehensive glance; but the sere stalks of the corn, which were straggling here, so near the end of the field, would nevertheless serve to shield him from the observation of any one in the yard or the porch of the cabin. He examined the knife with fierce eyes, his teeth set hard together: the handle was strong, the metal excellently well tempered. He passed his fingers gingerly along the edge,—keen, how keen! Clem Sanders himself had sharpened it! He sheathed it and thrust it back into his long boot-leg, and went on taking his way down the road toward the forge, nerved by the fact that bloodshed was expected of him. A drought had succeeded the wet weather, and the deep ruts formed by the wagon wheels in the red clay mire of the road were still stiff and hard, mementos of their slow, creaking progress; and although here and there a thin crust crumbled under his heel, his steps left no other trace. He heard a thrush whistle from the weeds as he went. He looked up at the spaces of the broad blue sky, infinite elsewhere, but here with bounds and barriers, for the mountains limited it and made it local. He was vaguely conscious that his dog, with an affectation of loyalty to his true owner, as one might seek to cultivate a fine trait to wear as a graceful accomplishment, knowing it to be exotic to the soil, trotted at his heels, with a long, lithe stride and a sinuously moving body, a wagging tail and a nose that pretended to snuff the ground, as if solicitous for some trail of fox, or rabbit, or other gentry. His master was presently made aware of his defection by seeing the canine shadow, cast a little in advance, suddenly swerve aside, and with a deft pace and a drooping tail the hound set out swiftly for his adopted home.