e looked hard at me for a moment and then suffered me to take the gun.
The fire was now dying, and, looking to the left, whence the firing had
come, I saw two of the Aimes boys standing under a tree.

"Bill, I could kill both of them," Alf said, in a sorrowful voice.

"I know, my dear boy, but you must not. You would always regret it. We
will let the law take charge of them to-morrow."

"Not to-morrow, Bill, but to-night. To-morrow they will be gone."

"All right; just as you say. Where is the nearest officer?"

"A deputy sheriff lives about two miles from here, off to the right of
our road home. Come on."

We came into the road after making a circuit through the woods, and
hastened onward. And we must have gone nearly half the distance to the
deputy's house when we heard the Aimes boys coming behind us, drunk and
whooping. "They think we are burnt up," said Alf; "but we'll show them.
Let's get aside into the bushes, and when they come along we'll let them
have it."

"We will get aside into the bushes," said I, "but we will not let them
have it. Come over this side. Let me have your gun."

He let me take the gun, and as he stood near me, waiting for the
ruffians to pass, I thought that he made an unseemly degree of noise,
merely to attract their attention so that he might have an opportunity
to fire at them. "Keep still, Alf," I whispered.

They came down the road, singing a bawdy song. For a moment I was half
inclined to give Alf his gun, but that early lesson, the waylaying of
Bentley, restrained me. We heard the scoundrels talking between their
outbursts of song. "Piece of roast hog wouldn't go bad jest about now,
Scott. I feel sorter gnawish after my excitement of the evenin'."

"Wall, if you air hongry and hanker atter hog, why don't you go back
yander and git a piece that we've jest roasted?"

Alf's hand closed about the barrels of his gun, and strongly he pulled,
but I loosened his grip and whispered: "Let them go. There is no honor
and very little revenge in shooting a brute."

"I reckon you are right," he replied, but he did not whisper, and out in
the road there was a quick scuffling of feet and then a halt. I threw
one arm about Alf and pressed one hand over his mouth.

"What was that, Scott?"

"I didn't hear nothin'."

"Thought I heared somebody a-talkin'."

"Yes, you thought like Young's niggers--thought buck-eyes was biscuits.
Come on, boys. We'll go over and wake old Josh up and git more