ar
through, and it's pretty near all in the village." Sim turned to the door.
"I'll help you, and then--drive."

"I ain't agoing to drive anywhere," Gordon told him; "I'm where I
belong."

"You don't belong in Greenstream after that piece in the _Bugle_," his
hand rested on the knob. "Tie up anything you need, I'll hitch the
buggy."

"Don't you touch a strap," Gordon commanded; "because I won't put a foot
in her."

"It'll all settle down in a little; then maybe you can come back."

"What'll settle down?"

"Why, the deal with the railroad."

"Sim," Gordon demanded sharply, "you never believed that in the paper?"

"I don't know what to b'lieve," the other replied evasively; "a good many
say those are the facts, that you have the options."

"Get out of here!" Gordon shouted in a sudden moving rage; "and stay out;
don't come back when you find what's what."

"I c'n do that. And I'll point out to you we just came for Lettice, we
never took nothing of yours. I only stopped now to warn you away ... I'll
hitch her up, Gordon; you get down the road."

"It's mine now, whose ever it was awhile back. I've paid for it. You go."

Simeon Caley lingered reluctantly at the door. Gordon stood rigidly; his
eyes were bright points of wrath, his arm rose, with a finger indicating
the world without. The former slowly opened the door, stepped out upon the
porch; he stayed a moment more, then closed himself from sight.

XVIII

The stir and heat of Sim's presence died quickly away; the house was
without a sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy in ravelled black and
buff wool. Gordon assembled the scattered papers on the table into an
orderly pile. He moved into the kitchen, abstractedly surveyed the
familiar walls; he walked through the house to the sitting room, where he
stood lost in thought:

The County was "mad clear through"; Sim, supposing him guilty, had warned
him to escape, advised him to run away.... That had never been a habit of
the Makimmons, he would not form it now, at the end. He was not
considering the mere probability of being shot, but of the greater
disaster that had already smashed the spring of his living. His
sensibilities were deadened to any catastrophe of the flesh.

At the same time he was conscious of a mounting rage at being so
gigantically misunderstood, and his anger mingled with a bitter contempt
for Simeon Caley, for a people so blind, so credulous, so helpless in the
grasp of a s