“Now I’m not afraid of Teck Jepson; you can bet high on that,” Rathburn protested, with a sudden flush. “You are such a fool, Jake, though you think yourself very smart indeed, that you make all sorts of mistakes, and you want me to make them, too. You ought never to have said that the man fell into a cave or chasm—for you don’t know it.” That continually recurrent doubt again crossed his mind, and he cast a quick, suspicious glance across the hearth at Baintree, whose trembling hands were spread out to the fire, his pallid face bearing that recent impress of a strong nervous shock, indescribable, but as unmistakable as the print of a blow. “You ought never to have hid his coat and hat,—and, by the way, the Broomsedge despot took no measures to punish you for that,—and I dare say if the man’s bones were found even now in a cave on _his_ land, people would like to know how _his_ cave came by them.” Baintree looked up with a sudden flash of his former sly intelligence, then bent his brooding eyes once more on the fire. “Especially,” Rathburn continued, after a pause, “as they were always on bad terms. You would be in a better position to stand such a discovery than Jepson, for the jury has said that you had nothing to do with his bones. What did Jepson quarrel with him about?” Baintree never spoke of the victim of the catastrophe save with a bated voice and a strained, anxious expression, almost a contortion in its speculative keenness to detect the lack of confidence that was the usual sequence of his words. “’Bout’n the way he treated his wife.” “His wife?—thought he was a young fellow, a mere boy.” “He war married young,—’bout twenty. Gal war young, too. They didn’t agree tergether. Some folks ’lowed he beat her, but Sam’l’s kin declared they jes’ fought tergether—her bein’ ez survigrous ez him. But Jepson went over thar one day whenst she hed her head tied up, ’lowin’ her husband hed busted it, an’ he gin Sam’l a turr’ble trouncin’. _He_ hed _his_ head tied up arter that.” “I suppose she didn’t mourn her loss?” suggested Rathburn, with a jeering smile. “Took on turr’ble a-fust, an’ married agin ’fore the year war out.” “Glad to get rid of him, eh?” “_He’d_ hev been mighty glad ter git rid o’ _her_. Useter ’low sometimes ez he’d run away from her ef he hed ennywhar ter run ter, an’ from Jepson, too. He war turr’ble ’feard o’ Jepson. He useter ’low sometimes ez he wisht he hed never kem from North Car’liny, whar he useter live an’ work in a silver mine. It gin out, though, an’ warn’t wuth nuthin’ ter its owners.” “I wonder,” said Rathburn speculatively, “if that isn’t where he is right now.” “Hedn’t been hearn on thar at the time o’ the trial,” said Baintree. “Or else,” pursued Rathburn meditatively, “if in trouncing him, according to his royal prerogative, Jepson might not have overdone the chastisement, and stowed away the evidences of how justice had overborne mercy in that cave of his.”