"Shore, I did. I was a-settin' on Brother Bill Layne's porch whilst you was talkin' to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o' pitiful you cayn't let that pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff." "That's enough," said Tom hotly. "I've heard all I'm going to about that thing, from friends or enemies." "I ain't no way shore about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was 'lottin' to say a few things, m'self." Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track. "There's the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or the back half--whichever you like." Japheth's answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take either. "You cayn't rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I've knowed you a heap too long. Git in the fu'ther rut and take your medicine like a man." Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion again, and Japheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down. "Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain't goin' to tell no tales out o' school this here one time. But you got to let Nan alone, d'ye hear?" "Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I'll go where I please, and do what I please. You seem to forget that I'm not a boy any longer!" "Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other. "But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff." Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent. "Tell me something, Japhe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of an eye. "Is Nan coming back to the dog-keeper's cabin when the family leaves the hotel?" "'Tain't goin' to make any difference to you if she does," said Pettigrass, wondering where he was to be hit next. "It may, if you'll do me a favor. You'll be where you can see and hear. I want to know who visits her--besides Miss Ardea." Brother Japheth's smile was more severe than the sharpest reproach. "Still a-harpin' on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been erbout the best friend you've had, barrin' your daddy, for a right smart spell o' years. Don't you keep on tryin' to th'ow dust in my eyes." "Call it what you please; I don't care what you think or say. But when you find a man hanging around Nan--" "They's one right now," said the horse-trader casually. Tom reined up as if he would ride back to Pine Knob forthwith. "Who is it?" he demanded. "Young fellow named Kincaid--jest back f'om out West, somewheres. Brother Bill Layne let on to me like maybe he'd overlook what cayn't be he'ped, and marry Nan anyhow. And that's another reason you got to keep away." "Let up on that," said Tom, stiffening again. "If you had been where you could have used your ears as you did your eyes back yonder at Pine Knob, you'd know more than you seem to know now."