“Don’t hang ’em; it mought hurt ’em,—that air what every sistren of ’em in this broad land would say,” the speaker continued, in high feather, gratified by the flattering coincidence of the majority. “Now, Clem, ye kin bear me out,” he said, turning unexpectedly toward the young blacksmith, who gave so abrupt a start that the cat in the moonlit crevice rose up suddenly, with a back bowed high and an angry hiss; then, with her tail aloft and stiff she ran off with an unprecedented nimbleness, up the mound of hay, and composed herself to watch studiously a certain beam high out of reach, on which she had seen a lithe whisking shadow of rodent-like action. Clem heavily turned himself in the hay; he was swift to indorse mentally any plausible proposition, and he remembered anew with anxious self-reproach and many twinges of conscience his disclosures to Marcella. She had disapproved, as Bassett had urged that any woman would. Was it possible that she would act upon this disapproval? But after all, would she dare, and what could she do? He sought to solace his fears, and to shake off his overpowering sense of treachery and guilt, by arguing within himself the futility of any scheme she might devise; even circumstance seemed to favor him. He felt ashamed to experience a certain gratulation that her father, so vehement a stickler for the maintenance of the law, was not available in this emergency. “Eli be too sick fur her ter resk excitin’ him ’bout sech. _She_ ain’t goin’ ter ’sturb Eli ef Jake Baintree war ter git hung, like he oughter hev been a year ago an’ better, an’ would hev been ef Teck Jepson hed hed his way.” He was summarily roused from these absorptions by Bassett’s raucous drawl:— “Whyn’t ye answer, Clem? Air ye a-snoozin’ thar, ye sleepy-headed sorrel-top?” “I hearn ye,” replied Clem gruffly. “I dunno how _I_ kin bear ye out. I dunno all the wimmen in the mountings, an’ I don’t wanter. Some will do one way an’ some another; ennythin’ ez air onexpected an’ suddint.” “That’s jes’ it!” exclaimed Bassett. “The Bible ’lows ez the woman war made from one o’ Adam’s ribs, an’ I’ll be bound, though the Bible don’t say so, ez her brains war jes’ the odds and e-ends lef’ over from Adam’s brains, an’ that’s why her thoughts air jes’ higglety-picklety; a leetle o’ this, an’ a tech o’ that, an’ none ter las’ more ’n a minit. An’ she didn’t shine on that ’casion in the Gyardin as an adviser, an’ that’s how it happens men ever sence hev been glad ter git shet o’ thar wife’s advice.” “I ain’t never seen one woman ez larnt enny lesson from Eve,” remarked Peter Bryce. “They gin thar advice yit ez ef ’twar one o’ the precious things o’ the yearth, an’ air always powerful ’stonished an’ conflusticated every time ez the men folks ain’t willin’ ter break thar necks ter profit by it.”