Jepson did not resent it, for he had a certain scornful indulgence of the cowardly amiability of his half-brother, and a contemptuous pity for the hardship of his position in his own house. He quietly hung the powder-horn and shot-pouch upon a prong of the deer antlers that formed the rack for his gun. Then he sat down before the fire, his eyes on the blaze, his legs crossed, bringing one of his heavy boots so near Bob that the fat baby could not refrain from leaning forward, and with both chubby hands making the rowel whirl. His teeth shone, his eyes gleamed, he chuckled with glee, till, catching Mrs. Bowles’s gaze, a sudden gravity settled upon his open mouth, and he leaned back in his armchair, affecting to rub his eyes, but now and then glancing furtively at her. The cat came and purred about him, and rubbed against his dimpled legs; then, suddenly bethinking herself, stood erect on her hind feet and put her fore-paws on his knees to beg. He was not eating, but she watched for some moments with stern and vigilant eyes every movement of his chubby hands, that they should not undetected convey some unshared delicacy to his lips. Finally even feline patience was exhausted, and with an inaudible motion of mewing once or twice she sprang into the child’s lap, curled up, and composed herself to slumber. Bowles moved uneasily in his chair. The aggressive silence weighed hardly less heavily upon his spirit than the more active expressions of antagonism which he had sought to avert or annul. Now he glanced at his wife with an urgent remonstrance in his face, of which he was unaware, or he would have suppressed it in his timorous policy, and now at Teck Jepson with an air of appeal. Presently, in desperation, he broke the pause:— “War ye a-axin’ jes’ now, Teck, who fetched the news hyar? I warn’t payin’ much ’tention.” Jepson did not take his eyes from the flames. “Naw, I didn’t ax,” he said. Bowles subsided into silence, and his wife turned and cast a contemptuous glance upon him, which he comprehended as a rebuke that he should interfere. The fire burned the freer and the clearer for the draught from the open door; the circle sat well back from the hearth in the alternate red flare and white fluctuations; the dark night looked in through the black aperture of window and door; the awful solitude of the unpeopled mountain was close without. Sometimes a dallying white presence was visible, and one might know that a mist was skulking close at hand, clearing away again to show the glimmer of a lonely star through a dark pine bough. A tree-toad trilled; the woods sighed, and lapsed again to soundless solitude.