"It wasn't so very long ago, nuther," said Ike, whose dialect was always intensified when there were harvest hands on the place. "What wasn't?" said Rachel, with her back to him. "Why, Tom's scrape, of course." "Was it a very bad one? Did he get took up?" Rachel's face was still averted, but Ike noted with pleasure that her voice showed a keen interest in his news. "Oh, no, 't's not him that ought to be took up; it's Dave Sovine." Rachel cleared her throat and waited a few seconds before speaking again. "Did Dave hurt Tom much?" she asked, groping after the facts among the various conjectures that suggested themselves. "Well, yes," said Ike, with a broad grin of delight at his sister's wide guessing; but by this time he was pretty well exhausted by the strain put upon his feeble secretiveness. "Yes, hurt him? I sh'd say so!" he went on. "Hurts like blazes to have a black-leg like Dave win all yer money an' yer knife, 'an yer hankercher, an' yer hat an' coat an' boots in the bargain. But you mus'n't say anything about it, Sis. It's a dead secret." "Who told you?" "Nobody," said Ike, feeling some compunction that he had gone so far. "I just heard it." "Who'd you hear it from?" "George Lockwood kind uh let 't out without 'xactly sayin' 't wuz Tom. But he didn't deny it _wuz_ Tom." Having thus relieved himself from the uncomfortable pressure of his secret, Ike got up and went out whistling, leaving Rachel to think the matter over. It was not the moral aspect of the question that presented itself to her. If Tom had beaten Sovine she would not have cared. It was Tom's cleverness as well as his buoyant spirit that had touched her, and now her hero had played the fool. She had the wariness of one who had known many lovers; her wit was not profound, and she saw rather than contrived the course most natural to one of her prudent and ease-loving temperament; she would hold Tom in check, and postpone the disagreeable necessity for final decision. V THE MITTEN