Clem Sanders had palpably winced under this arraignment, despite his bluff courage, fearing that he had too definitely evinced his changed feeling, and that in some way it might result in eliciting the fact that he had divulged their plans to Marcella Strobe. He detected the influence of her fancied preference in the evident acrimony of Teck Jepson’s sentiment toward him, but he was not moved to reply until the slur was cast upon his capacities as a blacksmith. Even in this moment of supreme emotion his simple art was dear to him. “Whar’ll ye find a better blacksmith?” he cried, springing to his feet, and holding both arms outspread. “Whar’ll ye find him? Tell me, an’ I’ll walk a hunderd mile ter see him!” The dignity of the worker who loves his craft and does his utmost in its service was in his face and manner, as he stood, and served to neutralize his over-weening vanity. “Ef he war ter tell ye, ye wouldn’t b’lieve him,” said Dake discerningly, as Jepson turned slightingly away, and Clem sank back once more into the deep, elastic meshes of the hay. “Waal,” Bassett resumed his objections, “air we-uns a-goin’ ter keep this up till Christmus? An’ what did we begin it fur? Ef it air perlite an’ agreeable ter hang Baintree down hyar, why ain’t it jes’ ez perlite an’ agreeable ter go git him up in the mountings? ’Twould save time an’ sleep, an’ be jes’ edzac’ly the same ter him.” “Hang him fur what?” demanded Teck Jepson succinctly. Clem Sanders, with a galvanic start, turned his head as he lay in the masses of the hay, and stared at the speaker. “Fur—fur—a-doin’ of whatever he air a-doin’ of,” said Bassett, to whom a reputation for a logical, level head was by no means a cherished ambition. Jepson shook his own head with an imperatively negative gesture. “We hev got ter find out ez he air arter some harm fust,—some wickedness ez air agin the interus’ o’ the kentry. He mought hev done nothin’ wuss ’n fool with them leetle tongs; an’ ef Clem’s half the blacksmith he makes hisself out ter be, he ought ter be able ter fix ’em agin.” “Hang him fur a-killin’ of Sam’l Keale, o’ course,” said Bassett casually, his unthinking face repulsive in its lack of any expression that might attest some protest of humanity, some reluctant though urgent and distorted sense of justice, as he paused in his striding to and fro, and stood in the illumined square of the window. “Ye always ’lowed ’twar jestice.”