"Don't be too knowin', Sapphiry, an' don't git yourself into a inquirin' frame o' mind. That there red petticoat's enough fer you to think about jest now." About sunset Edgar Coffey came slouching up the road, apparently intending to pass the place without stopping, but when he saw the red petticoat hanging over the top rail of the fence he seemed suddenly to remember that he wanted a drink of water from Judy's glacial spring, with something to temper its coldness perhaps. So he leaped the fence, and passing around the house, toward the spring, confronted Judy at her back door. Quite casually she invited him in, and after her hospitable habit she brought forth a decanter of apple jack for his entertainment. "Now drink sparin'-like, Edgar," she said, "'cause you's got business to ten' to an' I don't want none o' that confusion o' tongues the Bible tells about. But mend your drink an' git over your tired an' then I'll give you your pinters." Edgar Coffey was habitually a sober man. That is to say he never drank liquor that he must pay for; but when the tipple cost him nothing he was apt to make up for lost time. Judy, whose habit it was to know all about the men she dealt with, knew this, and upon occasion tempered her alcoholic hospitality with prudent reserve. If she had had no mission for Edgar Coffey to fulfil, he might have emptied the bottle without interference on her part. As it was, she withdrew the supply as soon as he had filled his little tumbler for the third time, and as soon as he had emptied it again she addressed herself to the business in hand. "That there William Wilberforce Webb has been here with his gang, to 'lectioneer me," she said. She would have used some opprobrious epithet with Webb's name if she could have thought of one that seemed to her more scornful than the man's own cumbersome name did. "Yes, I knowed they was a-comin'," answered Edgar. "Never mind what you knowed. Listen to me. You is to go an' git Morris Bryant an' Lem Fulcher, an' Wyatt Fletcher an' two or three others, an' 'tend his speakin' meetin's, specially' them as don't lay close to here--them as is held in the furder parts o' the mountings where may be a word from me don't count for as much as it does round here." "Is we to raise a racket an' break up the meetin's?"