The young fellow, aghast at what he had done, and still more aghast at what he had sought to do, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling upon hearing Jepson’s words; his fluctuating anger, that had failed to bear him through his enterprise, flared up anew. His pride, too, was touched that Clem had held his rage and the wound he had dealt as so slight a thing,—offering not even a blow in return; he was nettled that in no way could he impress a commensurate idea of the intention and the spirit that had animated him, and he resented infinitely Jepson’s tone, upbraiding him as if he were a boy. The wish for adequate reprisal, to deal him a blow that he would surely feel to the quick, broke down what slight reserves his boyish nature had. “Ye hev got the same reason ter want him dead ez me!” he cried out. “Marcelly Strobe air a-goin’ ter marry him. Her dad said so,—an’ she did, too.” He had the satisfaction of seeing Teck Jepson palpably recoil. He was all at once very pale. He did not look at Clem Sanders, nor seem to see anything very definitely. He gazed blankly into space, or perhaps into the vistas of memory for corollary data to confirm this thing. His hand was on the window-sill, and it trembled visibly. Andy Longwood watched these symptoms of pain, each pang of which he could well divine, with a sort of gloating relish, and once or twice his quick breathing was so pronounced as to seem a snort of victory. “Now! _Now!_” he said, nodding his head triumphantly. Clem Sanders had stood as one petrified, turning over these significant words in his mind, with a rampant doubt on his face. Suddenly he regained his faculty of motion and his easy credulity. He tore off his leather apron, leaving the iron cooling on the anvil. As he plunged his dark red head into the barrel of cold water, where he usually tempered steel, his intention of making a toilet began to be manifest to the idlers about the place. Their rallying laughter and gibes gave Andy Longwood food for meditation anew. Evidently this was news to Clem, and the others seemed to readily appreciate it. “Take another souse, Clem, ef ye air goin’ a-visitin’,” observed the grinning Bassett; “then she can’t tell how red yer head be.” Clem stared at him credulously, and obediently thrust again his red head into the water, in the midst of renewed merriment. Andy Longwood experienced a sudden terror, which showed that his hope was not dead, as he had accounted it, but merely comatose. “Don’t tell her ’twar _me_ ez stabbed ye, Clem,” he pleaded, every vestige of the desperado gone. “Don’t tell on me.” “G’long, Andy!” replied the good-natured fellow. “I hev got suthin’ better ’n you-uns ter talk about.”