He said that the old musket was still in use in his young days--that he had killed many a deer with it. "Allus in them days I follered wearing red, because hit makes the deer stand at gaze. And"--pointing to the crimson linsey hunting-jacket that hung on a peg by the door--"I'm still a-wearing hit, though there hain't been a deer seed in these parts for allus. In them early days I never bothered with no shoes, or even moccasins--the soles of my feet was so thick I could easy crush chestnut-burrs with 'em. And many's the time I have laid out all night in the pouring rain and never kotched ary cold. Present-day young folks hain't no account--they have tendered theirselves too much." He also had his wife get out from a chest his greatest treasure--his grandsir's old yellow, crumbling Bible, "fotched out in his saddlebags when he come acrost from Old Virginny. And which now," he said triumphantly, "I can read myself, nigh as good as him." So saying, he opened the faded pages at the Twenty-third Psalm, and, with some prompting from Amy at the hard words, read it through proudly. The women then broached the subject of their visit--the shooting in the village the past two nights. "I heared hit all," said the old man. "Hit hain't Fult and his crowd, or Darcy and his'n, thank God! but just some of the sprouting-age boys that has got hold of liquor some way, and tuck too much." "But where do they get the liquor?" Uncle Ephraim shook his head. "No deeficulty about that," he said. "Stilling most gen'ally starts up pretty prompt atter the crap is laid by. You see, the folks in this country mostly feels they have got a fair right to do what pleases 'em with their corn they have raised, law or no law, and that the Gover'ment hain't got no business meddling. And I don't know but what they got right and jestice on their side, so fur as right and jestice goes. But what I look at is, the devilish harm the liquor does. Casting an eye back over a long lifetime, and the awful wickedness of men, and the general meanness of their manœuvres, I can't hardly ricollect a wrong that didn't have whiskey behind hit or mixed up in hit. The infamious stuff!" he cried, leaning forward in his chair with clenched hands, "hit ought to be buried face downward, unfathomed deep, and writ over the grave, 'No reesurrection'!" Settling back in his chair after a moment, he continued, in a different voice: "Folks is allus a-counseling me, 'Take a leetle corn-liquor for your rheumatiz'; hit's the holpingest medicine ever was made.' And so hit may be. But I'd sooner stand the pain as to pour that devil's potion down my neck. Now don't you get tore up in your minds over them boys, women. I'll ax around and try to get on the track of where they're getting that liquor." In the evening, just before the "sing," the women spoke to Fult about the trouble.