you, God bless you," he said. "Don't say a word; I
understand you. Git on the mare and go to town and find out all you can.
I won't go jest now--can't stand to see my son in jail. But don't say a
word, for I understand you. I reckon the neighborhood is pretty well
alive over it by this time. See if they'll let him go about on bail, but
I don't reckon they will, even if he did give himself up. They'll think
that he done it because he must have knowed that they were bound to
catch him. Go on and do whatever your jedgment tells you, and I know it
will be all right."

Over the road I went, toward Purdy, and the people who had come out of
their houses to speak words of encouragement to Alf and me when we were
on our way to see the Aimes boys tried, now stood about their doors,
gazing stupidly. At the wagon-maker's shop a crowd was gathered, and I
was recognized as I drew near by young men who had met me at the
General's house the night before--now so long ago, it seemed--and they
came out into the road and urged me to tell them all I knew. I felt that
Etheredge had already stirred in his own coloring, but I told the story
of the tragedy just as I had told it to the old man; and I had gathered
rein to resume my journey when a man rode up. "I'm going back to town!"
he shouted, waving his hand to a man who stood in the door of the
wagon-maker's shop. I rode on and he came up beside me.

"Are you Mr. Hawes?" he asked, and when I had answered him he said: "I
am Dr. Etheredge."

I bowed and he nodded with distinct coolness. He was not of happy
appearance; he was lean and angular, gray beyond the demand of his
years, and it struck me that he must be given to drink, not because he
was gray, but because there were puffs under his eyes and broken veins
where his skin was stretched over his high cheek-bones.

"A devil of an affair, this," he said. "Man met in the public highway
and murdered."

"Don't put it that way," I spoke up, "for perhaps you are not yet
acquainted with the causes that led to it."

"No cause, sir, should lead to murder."

"I agree with you there, but many a man has been compelled to kill in
order to save his own life."

He sneered at me. "But has many a man been compelled to stand for hours
in a public road, and in order to save his own life shoot down an
innocent person? I always held that Alf Jucklin was a dangerous and a
desperate man, and everybody knows that he comes of that breed. I never
did like h