and gasped out hoarsely,

"Pap--Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch and got away from us!"

The Lusk girls had staid to help Judith clear up, intending to remain
over night unless Andy and Jeff returned in time to take them home. The
three young women working at the table lifted pale faces; Pendrilla let
fall the plate in her hand and broke it. Unconscious of the fact, she
stood staring with open mouth at the fragments by her feet. Jephthah took
one more turn mechanically, then withdrew the key and laid it down.

"Whar at?" he inquired briefly.

"Up on our place," said Wade who now appeared at the boy's side.
"Bonbright throwed him over Foeman's Bluff."

"How come it?" queried the head of the tribe.

"They was a fussin'," began Andy, but his father interrupted him in a
curious tone.

"Foeman's Bluff," he repeated. "What tuck Bonbright thar at this time o'
night?"

"That's what I say," panted Jim Cal's voice in the darkness outside. He
had come straight from the still instead of going with Jeff and the
others to search; and for all his flesh he had overtaken his brothers.
But there was none now to demand sardonically why he fled the seat of war
and ran to the paternal shelter for re-enforcements. "Ef folks go nosin'
around whar they ain't wanted, sometimes they git what they don't like,"
he concluded.

Judith, very pale, had parted her lips to utter words of indignant
defence, and denial of this broad imputation, but before she could speak
Huldah Spiller irrupted into the room, her red curls flying, her bodice
clutched about her in such a fashion as to suggest she had been
undressing when the news reached her.

The mountain woman with temperament is reduced to the outlets of such
occasions as these, or revival seasons and funerals; and Huldah Spiller,
having abandoned the protesting Iley with her babies, whom the mother
could not leave alone, meant to make the most of the occasion.

"You-all ain't got no right to talk the way you do about Creed," the
red-haired girl burst out. "Him and me's been friends ever sence I went
to Hepzibah, and there ain't a better man walks the earth. Ef he done
anything to Blatch hit was becaze Blatch laywayed him an' jumped on him,
an' he had to. Oh, Lord!" and she began to weep, "I wish't my daddy was
here--I jest wish Pap Spiller was here. Pore Creed! Ef you-all git yo'
hands on him, mad thisaway, the Lord knows what will be did!"

Jephthah regarded his postulant daughter-in-law