They trudged on in silence for a few minutes. Then said Skimpy, glancing back over his shoulder, “I wish them boys would stir thar stumps an’ overhaul us. I hate ter be with sech a few folks arter night-fall ’roun Keedon Bluffs,”—he shrank apprehensively from the verge. “What fur?” demanded Jerry sharply. “Kase,” Skimpy lowered his voice and slipped nearer to his companion, “the folkses ’low ez thar be witches ’round hyar of a night arter it gits cleverly dark an’ lays by day in them hollows in the Bluffs, an’ kem out of a night ter strangle folkses.” He suddenly remembered from whom he had heard these fables. “Ye know ’twar _you-uns_ ez war a-tellin’ me an’ Ike ’bout them witches fus’ evenin’ we ever seen ye—along this hyar road with yer kyart an’ yer leetle gal.” Binwell was silent for a moment. Then he began to laugh in a chuckling way, and the Bluffs responded in muffled and sinister merriment. “’Twar jes’ a pack o’ lies, Skimp!” he said jovially. “I jes’ done it ter skeer that thar boy ez war along o’ you-uns—Ike Guyther. He be powerful easy skeered, an’ I wanted ter see how he’d look! I tell ye of a night he jes’ gathers his bones tergether an’ sets close ter the ha’th. Ef enny witches take arter him, they’ll hev ter kem down the chimbly afore all the fambly. Ike, he puts them witches on thar mettle ter ketch him.” “Waal, sir!” exclaimed the candid Skimpy, “it skeered me a sight wuss’n it did Ike. I ’lowed I’d never git home; ef I hed hed ez many feet ez a thousand-legs I could hev fund a use fur ’em all. An’ them two I did hev mos’ weighed a ton. Ike never ’peared ter me ter skeer a speck.” There was no doubt in his tones. He was a friendly fellow himself, and he looked only for fair-dealing in others. “Waal, I never went ter skeer _you-uns_,” said Jerry in his companionable manner. “I seen from the fust jes’ what sort’n boy you-uns war—stiddy, an’ reliable, an’ the kind o’ feller ez a body kin put dependence in—know jes’ whar ter find ye.” Skimpy listened in tingling delight to this sketch—it would not have been recognized at home. His mother might have considered it ridicule. “I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other boy”—he was looking Skimpy over very closely as he spoke, his eyes narrowing, his lips pursed up in a sort of calculation—he might have seemed to be mentally measuring Skimpy’s attenuated frame. “I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other boy. He’s powerful mean, Ike is. He air always a-purtendin’ ter like ennybody, an’ then a-laffin’ at ’em ahint thar backs. I didn’t know him then, but I knowed his uncle Ab, an’ I seen the minit I clapped eyes on him ez they war jes’ alike. An’ ez I hed a reason fur it, I skeered him. He’s mighty cantankerous ahint ennybody’s back,” Jerry continued as he strode on, swinging his right arm. “I hev hearn him declar’ ez that thar old cur o’ yourn, Bose, air the bes’-lookin’ member o’ the Sawyer fambly.” He glanced sharply at Skimpy, steadily stamping along the sandy road.