against me from the first," he charged, his voice
trembling; "you conspired to eat me holler, and now you conspire to
bring shame and disgrace to my gray hairs. I trust you and depend on
you, and I come home----"

Isom's arraignment broke off suddenly.

He stood with arrested jaw, gazing intently at the table. Joe followed
his eyes, but saw nothing on the table to hold a man's words and
passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the
lamp and Joe's old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered
crown presenting to Joe's eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on
the farther side as if resting on a fold of itself.

It came to Joe in an instant that Isom's anger had brought paralysis
upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom's name on his lips,
when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He
seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon
it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.

"Great God!" panted Isom in shocked voice, standing straight between
them, his left arm pressed to his breast as if it covered a mortal
wound. He twisted his neck and glared at Joe, but he did not disclose
the thing that he had gathered from the table.

"Great God!" said he again, in the same shocked, panting voice.

"Isom," began Joe, advancing toward him.

Isom retreated quickly. He ran to the other end of the table where he
stood, bending forward, hugging his secret to his breast as if he meant
to defend it with the blood of his heart. He stretched out his free hand
to keep Joe away.

"Stand off! Stand off!" he warned.

Again Isom swept his wild glance around the room. Near the door, on two
prongs of wood nailed to the wall, hung the gun of which Joe had spoken
to Morgan in his warning. It was a Kentucky rifle, long barreled, heavy,
of two generations past. Isom used it for hawks, and it hung there
loaded and capped from year's beginning to year's end. Isom seemed to
realize when he saw it, for the first time in that season of insane
rage, that it offered to his hand a weapon. He leaped toward it,
reaching up his hand.

"_I'll kill you now!_" said he.

In one long spring Isom crossed from where he stood and seized the rifle
by the muzzle.

"Stop him, stop him!" screamed Ollie, pressing her hands to her ears.

"Isom, Isom!" warned Joe, leaping after him.

Isom was wrenching at the gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe