“Martin,” he drawled slowly, “ain’t you makin’ a fine, large mistake? Didn’t you forget to study your books before you came rampagin’ into my place of business? As I recollect, I don’t owe you a red cent. You ain’t even one of my reg’lar and influential customers. They’s only one bill on my books that I’m carryin’ in your name and tain’t anything I’m proud of. I could spare it without a mite of trouble. Before you undertake to run my business, go back and stick your nose well down in your own. I ain’t goin’ to turn Jason out, and if you undertake to bother him, I got this same private account, that I’m going to increase against you a little in about a minute, that’d look peculiar to the deacons of your church and to all and sundry. If it’s the same to you, I wish you’d step out the way of my reg’lar customers!” Peter Potter swung his front door wide and held it open. In rage too deep for speech, Martin Moreland turned and started from the grocery, but he was forced to stand aside, for at that minute, Rebecca Sampson, with a smile of youthful innocence on her face, bearing her white flag over her shoulder, filled the doorway. She looked straight at Peter Potter, and as an evidence of a custom between them, she held out her white flag and Peter Potter bowed his bald, pink head and stepped under it with the kindliest kind of a “Good morning!” The change in his voice and in his manner broke the nerve of Martin Moreland, already at the breaking point. The oath he uttered was shocking. Startled, Rebecca pushed back her bonnet and looked up at him. A flash of loathing, of anger, crossed her face. She caught the white symbol to her breast and edged to the farthest possible distance from him permitted by the width of the store. She made her way back to where she was accustomed to being served, muttering imprecations upon the head of Martin Moreland that were quite equal to Martin’s best in strong provocation. In the high tide of anger, he took one step toward her. The resistant force with which he came in arresting contact was nothing less than the sturdy frame of Peter Potter in defensive attitude. Peter looked up at Martin Moreland with fire in his eyes and a sneer on his lips. “Get it through your pate,” he said tersely. “I’m one man out of a few in this town that’s not a mite afraid of you. If we come to a show down, I’ve got something to show that would interest the rest of the town, I vow! I’ve asked you once to leave my store; now I wish you’d do it!”