we brought the doctor, it was to learn that
the patient would have to lie in bed for perhaps a week or two, but need
fear no grave consequences. His wound had narrowly missed the heart, but
the margin was sufficient. My own injury proved to be a mere flesh
scratch and a bandage did for it all that was needful.

I was rather surprised at the almost lethargic calmness with which the
household greeted our disordered homecoming. Preparations for supper
went on with little interruption. There was no excited demand from those
who had stayed at home, for the full story, and even the children seemed
uninquisitive. Only the aged woman showed a flash of unexpected fire as
she demanded, "Didn't ye git nary one of _them_?"

"We got Rat-Ankle," drawled an unshaven lout with a revolting note of
placid satisfaction.

"That's better'n not gettin' nary one," commended the old woman. Her
voice revealed the hereditary source of Marcus' ability for sincere
hating.

I looked at her aged, monkey-like face and the intensity of her beady
eyes with wonderment. There was vindictiveness there but no fear, no
excitement even, except the excitement of hate--and yet this old woman
was the same who could not be induced to travel on a railroad train for
fear of an accident.

It was several hours later that the doctor arrived. He was much like the
men among whom he lived. If he had once been otherwise long association
had roughened him to their own similitude. He entered with a wordless
nod and went straight to the bed where the injured man lay unconscious.
After a silent examination he opened his worn and faded saddle-bags and
proceeded taciturnly but capably with his work. He asked no questions
and Marcus volunteered no explanation. At last he rose and said, "He
ain't in no great danger if he keeps quiet. Have you got a little licker
in the house, Calloway?"

Before the fireplace he poured generously from a stoneware jug into a
tin cup, but instead of tossing down his white whiskey at a gulp he
sipped it slowly, while he gave directions to the lawyer or shouted them
loudly into the ear of the old woman. The only allusion to the ambuscade
came from her.

"Our folks got Rat-Ankle," she announced somewhat triumphantly. "But
they didn't see nary other face of them that lay-wayed 'em."

"Don't pay no attention to Mother," said Marcus more hastily than I had
before heard him speak; "at times she gets childish."

The physician nodded.

Then it