e. The difficulty of what
he had to say blocked speech for so long that Stoddard, in a curiously
quiet voice, finally prompted him.

"Tales?" he repeated. "What tales, Mr. Himes?"

"Why, they ain't a old woman in town, nor a young one neither--I believe
in my soul that the young ones is the worst--that ain't been
talkin'--talkin' bad--ever since you took Johnnie to ride in your
otty-mobile."

Again there came a long pause. Stoddard stared down on Gideon Himes, and
Himes stared at his own feet.

"Well?" Stoddard's quiet voice once more urged his accuser forward.

Pap rolled his head between his shoulders with a negative motion which
intimated that it was not well.

"And lending her books, and all sich," he pursued doggedly. "That kind
o' carryin' on ain't decent, and you know it ain't. Buck knows it
ain't--but he's willin' to have her. He told her he was willin' to have
her, and the fool gal let on like she didn't want him. He came here to
board at my house because she wouldn't scarcely so much as speak to him
elsewhere."

By the light of these statements Stoddard read what poor Johnnie's
persecution had been. The details of it he could not, of course, know;
yet he saw in that moment largely how she had been harried. At the
instant of seeing, came that swift and mighty revulsion that follows
surely when we have misprized and misunderstood those dear to us.

"What is it you want of me?" he inquired of Himes.

"Why, just this here," Pap told him. "You let Johnnie Consadine alone."
He leaned even closer and spoke in a yet lower tone, because a number of
girls were emerging from the house and starting down the steps. "A big,
rich feller like you don't mean any good by a girl fixed the way Johnnie
is. You wouldn't marry her--then let her alone. Things ain't got so bad
but what Buck is still willin' to have her. You wouldn't marry her."

Stoddard looked down at the shameful old man with eyes that were
indecipherable. If the impulse was strong in him to twist the unclean
old throat against any further ill-speaking, it gave no heat to the tone
in which he answered:

"It's you and your kind that say I mean harm to Johnnie, and that I
would not marry her. Why should I intend ill toward her? Why shouldn't I
marry her? I would--I would marry her."

As he made this, to him the only possible defence of the poor girl, Pap
faltered slowly back, uttering a gurgling expression of astonishment.
With a sense of surprise Stodd