“Your brother’s wife, eh?” he sneered. “Look here, child, you go home and eat your supper. Don’t you get worked up over Fanchon. I’ve known the lady quite a spell. If I whistled”--Mr. Corwin threw his head back and walked across the room toward Leigh, flushed with liquor, truculent, intolerable--“if I whistled, she’d run off with me to-morrow. I don’t because”--he came closer to Leigh now, laughing and sneering, insult in every line of his coarse, flushed face--“because I don’t want her!” Leigh swung around and faced him, shaking with rage. “You lie!” he cried hoarsely. Corwin only laughed boisterously. “You fool kid, you don’t know the lady. She----” He leaned over, thrust his face close to Leigh’s and whispered. The boy sprang back. “Stop!” he almost shrieked. “I’ll fight you! I’m a Carter, and I challenge you to fight a duel!” The man laughed loudly again. “A duel with you? You kid!” “Yes, with me!” Leigh trembled with passion. “You’ve got to fight--I’ll send my seconds. You’re a coward, sir, and a liar!” Corwin caught him suddenly by the shoulder. “See here, you Carter boy!” said he. “You’ve called me a liar twice to-day. I’m not a liar--I’ll show you! Fight duels for that woman? Bah! I don’t fight kids--I box their ears!” He sneered and slapped Leigh’s face. The boy, with a cry of passion and shame, wrenched himself free, snatched the pistol from his pocket, and fired pointblank. The noise of the report rang in his own ears with a deafening crash, and there was a little whiff of smoke. Leigh reeled back, his horrified eyes fixed on the floor. Corwin had crumpled up like a sack of meal and lay there in a heap, stone dead. XVII PLATO was removing the tray from the wicker table in the garden. The colonel, sitting under his horse-chestnut, observed the operation thoughtfully, smoking one of his big cigars. “Yessuh, if yo’ wants to buy a horse yo’ can hab it cheap--dat’s what Job Wills says. He was down to Miz Carter’s dis mornin’ talkin’ to dat yaller girl, Mirandy. She done tole me. It am a good horse, col’nel, only got dat habit ob rollin’ in de water.” “Pretty bad habit, Plato,” observed the colonel. “Don’t know as I’d like to have Miss Jinny rolled into the water.” “Dat’s what happened to Miz Wilyum Carter, suh. She got rolled in de creek, an’ she didn’t get home till round one o’clock in de mornin’. Mirandy, she say Mist’ Carter, he mos’ throw a fit. Dat’s de reason de livery-stable done wanter sell dat horse. Job Wills, he say he’s good horse, but he’s de rollin’est horse he ever see--in a stream.” The colonel looked thoughtfully at the end of his cigar. “Suppose I bought him, Plato? How about the rolling habit?”