“Thinks!” snorted the innkeeper contemptuously. “What sort of proofs may you be looking for, Jacob? Ain't I furnishing them by the cartloads? She's kin to you, and you don't want to think ill of her; but just hear me, all of you—” “He's been drinking,” whispered Bushrod; but Tucker, whose senses appeared to be wonderfully acute all at once, heard him. “Drinking!” he exploded, in a thin shriek of anguish. “Of course I been drinking. What was good, red licker made for if it wa'n'. for a time like this when you're publicly made a fool of by a trifling no-account woman, whose head never held an ounce of sense in all her born days! She's your cousin, Jake, I mind that, and my word! she's damn little credit to you—but she's worse shame to me.” Stephen, with some difficulty, possessed himself of these facts. The night before, the faithful Jim had taken Mrs. Tucker out to her father's farm on the South Road. She had sent him back with the message that her father would drive her home when she should be ready to return. Midnight came, and she did not appear; Mr. Tucker, somewhat alarmed for her safety, dispatched Jim in quest of her. He had shortly returned with the information that Captain Gibbs had called at the farm early in the evening and had proposed driving her home, and they had ridden away together, behind a most excellent span of horses which the perfidious Gibbs had hired of Mr. Tucker. This was the last any one had seen of them. The tavernkeeper told Stephen this between sobs, and oaths, and threats. “Think of it, Steve—she's quit me for that infernal scalawag!” “You are too willing to think ill of her, Tucker,” said Landray. “It may turn out all right, and then you will be the first to regret your haste.” “Man, I know she's gone with him!” cried the tavernkeeper. “Ain't he been hanging about here for days past, and all to get a word with her—I seen it!” “Perhaps they've stopped somewhere on the way into town, they may have had a breakdown, or their horses may have run off,” suggested Benson. “Run off? That team? No, sir! They have lit out together—damn her foolishness, and him just next door to nothing! I'll catch them yet, though! Jim! You Jim!” he bawled. The stableman appeared at the door. “What do you want now, Tucker?” he asked. “What I been wanting for the last half hour—a horse and fix!” “That's what I'm trying to get for you, if you'd just leave off yelling for me,” said Jim. But Tucker paid no heed to him, he was threatening again. “When I catch up with them it will go hard with him! I'll learn him he can't run off with no wife of mine! You hear me? Him or me'll go down!” “But you are sure of nothing yet,” interposed Stephen, shocked at the readiness he was displaying to think the worst of his wife.