“Waal, then, what did it sound like ter you-uns?” demanded the first speaker, frustrated in argument, and realizing that he would first have to foster a sensation in order to assume his favorite iconoclastic _rôle_. It is an old saying that two are required to make a quarrel, and it is not worn out yet. “Sounded ter me,” put in the simple Clem, “like a woman a-callin’.” “Else a wild-cat, or suthin’,” suggested the first speaker. He was Peter Bryce, Mrs. Bowles’s former lover; and although he had survived her cruelty, his disposition had succumbed to the souring influences of disappointment, and his estimate of women had suffered. “Naw, sir!” said Clem, with a definite accession of acerbity, and becoming communicative under its stress. “I ’lowed ’twar _my mother_ a-callin’ me. Mought hev been mistaken, though,” he qualified. Bassett, still half kneeling in the billowy hay, in the shadow save for a slender moonbeam falling upon him from a crevice in the roof above, skein-like and fibrous, turned a suspicious eye upon the stalwart young blacksmith, who was indistinct in the semi-obscurity. “Clem Sanders,” he said sternly, “hev ye been fool enough ter tell her ’bout we-uns, an’ sech ez we air lookin’ ter do?” There was no striding to and fro now; all the burly armed figures were still and silent for a moment, their eyes, whether distinct and shining in the moonlight, or barely discerned in the shadow, fixed with one accord upon Clem Sanders, who needed all his courage to face the suspicion of treachery that they expressed. “Of course I never. What would I be a-tellin’ mam sech ez that fur, in the name o’ common sense? She be a-callin’ me, I reckon, ter feed some apple-parin’s ter the peegs, fur all I know.” There was a momentary silence; then discerning the distinctly sullen note in his reply, Bassett found the tact to say:— “Ye know, Clem, we hain’t got no objection ter Mis’ Sanders, ’ceptin’ her bein’ a woman; bes’ one in the worl’, though. But ye know, Clem, ’tain’t safe ter trest ’em with sech. They tell everythin’ they know, an’ they hain’t got no sense ter reason on jestice an’ sech; ’twould jes’ let them men plumb off, ef enny woman war ter git a-holt o’ it. ’Twon’t do ter trest ’em with sech.”