“Hold on, _hold on_, Jeff Wade!” Pole broke in sternly. “Whenever you use words like them you smile! So fer, this has been a friendly talk, as I see it; but you begin to intimate that I’m a liar, an’ I’ll try my best to make you chaw the statement. You’re excited, but you mustn’t go too fur.” “Well, I want the truth, by God, I want the truth!” “Well, you are a-gittin’ it, with the measure runnin’ over,” Pole said, “an’ that ought to satisfy any reasonable man.” “So you think then, that Nelson Floyd never done any—any o’ the things folks says he did—that ’twas jest report?” “Well, I ain’t here to say that, nuther,” said Pole most diplomatically. “But la me! what a stark, ravin’ fool you was about to make o’ yoreself, Jeff!” Pole went on. “You started to do this thing today on yore sister’s account, when by doin’ it you would bust up her home an’ make her life miserable.” “You mean——?” “I mean that Joe Mitchell, that’s been dead stuck on Minnie sence she was a little gal, set up to her an’ proposed marriage. They got engaged an’ then every old snaggle-toothed busybody in these mountains set in to try to bust it up by totin’ tales about Floyd an’ others to ’im. As fast as one would come Minnie’d kill it, an’ show Joe what a foolish thing it was to listen to gossip, an’ Joe finally told ’em all to go to thunder, an’ they was married an’ moved on his farm in Texas. From all accounts they are doin’ well an’ are happy; but la me; they wouldn’t be that a-way long ef you’d ’a’ shot Nelson Floyd this mornin’.” “You say they wouldn’t, Pole?” “Huh, I reckon _you_ wouldn’t dance a jig an’ sing alleluia ef you was to pick up a newspaper this mornin’ an’ read in type a foot long that yore wife’s brother, in another state, had laid a man out stiff as a board fer some’n that folks said had tuck place some time back betwixt the man an’ her.” “Huh!” Wade’s glance was now on Pole’s face. “Huh, I reckon you are right, Pole, I reckon you are right. I wasn’t thinkin’ about that.” “Thar was _another_ duty you wasn’t a-thinkin’ about, too,” Pole said. “An’ that is yore duty to yore wife an’ childern that would be throwed helpless on the world ef this thing had ’a’ come off today.” “Well, I don’t see _that_, anyway,” said Wade dejectedly. “Well, _I_ do, Jeff. You see, ef you’d ’a’ gone on an’ killed Floyd, after I halted you, I’d ’a’ been a witness agin you, an’ I’d ’a’ had to testify that I told you, in so many words, whar the _rale_ blame laid, an’ no jury alive would ’a’ spared yore neck.” “I reckon that’s so,” Wade admitted. “Well, I guess I’ll go back, Pole. I won’t go any further with it. I promise you not to molest that scamp. I’ll not trade any more at his shebang, an’ I’ll avoid ’im all I kin, but I’ll not kill ’im as I intended.”