"In the hills," Jesse Plum declaimed. "Yah!" He waved (Goodman Cory's) gun approximately east, toward the Pocumtuck Range. "Now he'll slay no more cattle." He set the gun down with care. "Why, he might've attackted the boys, then I couldn't never 've forgave myself, no never." Jesse lifted knotty hands defying all powers that could threaten the Cory children, and Meco began a stately shuffle, perhaps the tentative offer of a victory dance, but found himself in the wrong mood. Smiling at everyone, Jesse explained: "'S the Lord's guidance." Father asked: "There's been cattle killed?" Jesse was immediately hurt and sulky. "Not never again by this beast--heart-shot he be." He nodded where he thought Meco was probably standing. "Good man--whoreson good man there." Reuben could remember seeing and hearing all that through a doorway partially filled by his mother's grace; he could remember squeezing in beside her, her arm dropping on his shoulder, her finger twisting in his hair, which he still wore quite long in those days. He could remember her bubbling with suppressed laughter. Ben was already outside, standing slim beside Father, contemplating Jesse's performance with adult gravity. The carcass lay at some distance, and a damp east wind was blowing toward the river, but even from the first that lion had not looked right. Bloated and not bloody; flies were settling. "Oh!" Mother said--"thankful heart! It hath a--a little stink." Meco was not as drunk as Jesse. He spread dark fingers in resignation. "Big stink," he amended, and strode off into rainy twilight, leaving Jesse to salvage what he might of glory. So far as Reuben recalled, Meco never came back. After he had gone--but now at twelve Reuben could not bring the rest easily to mind. Father had not found it so amusing. Jesse must have been obliged to bury the carrion and spend sober hours longing for invisibility. In following days, no doubt, whenever Jesse joined a gathering, say at the ordinary or leaning on a fence or discussing a bottle behind a shed, someone would make a soft faraway mention of catamounts, and Jesse would be surrounded by that shattering New England laughter which is performed without moving a muscle of the face or emitting any sound of any kind.