"Who's he? And why should I look out for him?" "Who's Mark Ducat? He's one of them Ducats of Piper's Glen who don't fear nothin' livin' or dead. He's old Peter Ducat's son an' the smartest man with his hands an' feet on Racket River; an' he's the lad who don't let no young feller he can't lick roam around his part of the country." "I'd like to meet him," said Jim. "You better not," returned Melchior earnestly. CHAPTER V THE COCK OF THE ROAD It was even as Melchior had said: Amos Hammond sought and found an opportunity before noon to speak alone with Jim Todhunter, and begged the young man to forget his outbreak of temper and remain under his roof. "Why do you want me to stay?" asked Jim. "I have decided not to have anything to do with your business, and I won't stand for any of your impudence or tyranny." "It would look bad, bad for both of us, if we was to break so soon; and yer friends in the States would be real disappointed," replied Hammond. "I'll give it another try," returned Jim, "but I warn you to keep a grip on that nasty temper of yours. You may commit murder some day, if you're not careful--or get yourself killed." He did not explain that his only reason for remaining was Mrs. Hammond's hysterical request. Hammond might know it or not, without being told it: Jim didn't care, one way or the other. Amos Hammond was a model husband, father, and host at dinner that day--in everything but appearance. His appearance was against him. He did not look in the least like the thing he was evidently trying to act and sound like. His grace before meat was lengthy and intimate; and even while he intoned it through his nose, with bowed head and tight-shut eyes, Melchior leaned sideways and whispered in Jim's ear, "An' yesterday he foreclosed on a poor widow woman over to Kingswood Settlement!" Jim slipped away from Melchior soon after dinner and set off up the river road with his gun under his arm. Though his glance was on the road ahead his thoughts were elsewhere, and several birds got up and away without drawing his fire. He made one shot before reaching the fork of the roads, dropping the big grouse dead as a stone as it whirred from cover to cover. Again he took the road to the left, which led up Piper's Glen. At times he walked fast, as if in a hurry to arrive somewhere, and at times he dawdled as if he had no objective and all the time in the calendar to fritter away. He was walking briskly, with a purposeful air, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly accosted by a man who sat on a mossy boulder in the deep shade beside the road. "Where ye a-goin' to so fast?" asked the stranger, in a drawling voice. Jim halted with a jerk, for this voice was the first intimation he had received of the other's presence. "Beg pardon?" he returned.