"Let's see--this hyar's ther y'ar one thousand and nine hundred.... Thar's some things I disremembers. Maggards ... Maggards?... I don't remember no Maggards.... No, siree! I don't remember none." The cripple turned impatiently away, and Bas Rowlett speculatively inquired: "Does ye reckon mebby he war a-fleein' from some enemy over in Virginny--an' thet ther feller followed atter him an' got him?" "Seems like we'd hev heered of ther other stranger from some source or other," mused Hump. "Hit hain't none of my business nohow--onless--" the man's voice leaped and cracked with a belligerent violence--"onless hit's some of Old Burrell Thornton's feisty kin, done come back ter tek up his wickedness an' plaguery whar he left off at." Bas Rowlett sat down on an empty box and his shoulders sagged wearily. "Hit's Old Burrell's house he come ter," he admitted. "But yit he told me he'd done tuck hit fer a debt. I hain't knowed him long, but him an' me hed got ter be good friends an' ther feller thet shot him come nigh gettin' me, too. Es fer me I'd confidence ther feller ter be all right." "Ef he dies," commented the deformed cynic, grimly, "I'll confidence him, too--an' ef he lives, I'll be plum willin' ter see him prove hisself up ter be honest. Twell one or t'other of them things comes ter pass, I hain't got nothin' more ter say." CHAPTER XI The room that Dorothy Harper had given over to the wounded man looked off to the front, across valley slope and river--commanding the whole peak and sky-limited picture at whose foreground centre stood the walnut tree. Uncle Jase came often and as yet he had been able to offer no greater assurance than a doubtful shake of the head. Bas Rowlett, too, never let a day pass without his broad shadow across the door, and his voice sounding in solicitous inquiry. But Dorothy had assumed an autocracy in the sick room which allowed no deviations from its decree of uninterrupted rest, and the plotter, approaching behind his mask of friendship, never found himself alone with the wounded man. Between long periods of fevered coma Cal Maggard opened his eyes weakly and had strength only to smile up at the face above him with its nimbus of bronze set about the heaviness of dark hair--or to spend his scarcely audible words with miserly economy. Yet as he drifted in the shadowy reaches that lie between life and death it is doubtful whether he suffered. The glow of fever through his drowsiness was rather a grateful warmth, blunted of all responsible thinking, than a recognized affliction, and the realization of the presence near him enveloped him with a languorous contentment.