get even with him. So this morning when I found that
Pap Himes and Shade had taken Mr. Stoddard's car and come on up this
way, it scared me. Yet I couldn't hardly go to anybody with it. I felt
as though they would say it was just a vain, foolish girl thinking she'd
stirred up trouble and had the men quarrelling over her. I did try to
see Mr. Hardwick and Mr. MacPherson, and both of them were away. And
after that I went to Mr. Hardwick's house. The Miss Sessions I wrote you
so much about was the only person there, and she wouldn't do a thing.
Then I just walked up here on my two feet. Uncle Pros, I was desperate
enough for anything."

Passmore had listened intently to Johnnie's swift, broken, passionate
sentences.

"Yes--ye-es," he said, as she made an end. "I sorter begin to see. Hold
on, honey, lemme think a minute."

He sat for some time silent, with introverted gaze, Johnnie with
difficulty restraining her impatience, forbearing to break in upon his
meditation.

"Hit cl'ars up to me--sorter--as I study on it," he finally said. "Hit's
like this, honey; six months ago (Lord, Lord, six months!) when I was
walkin' down to take that silver ore to you, Rudd Dawson stopped me, and
nothing would do but I must go home with him--ye know he's got the old
Gid Himes place, in the holler back of our house--an' talk to Will
Venters, Jess Groner, and Rudd's brother Sam. I didn't want to go--my
head was plumb full of the silver-mine business, an' I jest wanted to
git down to you quick as I could. The minute I said 'Johnnie,' Rudd
'lowed he wanted to warn me about you down in the Cottonville mills. He
went over all that stuff concerning Lura, an' how she'd been killed off
in the mill folk's hospital and her body shipped to Cincinnati and sold.
I put in my word that you was a-doin' well in the mills; an' I axed him
what proof he had that the mill folks sold dead bodies. I 'lowed that
you found the people at Cottonville mighty kind, and the work good. He
came right back at me sayin' that Lura had talked the same way, and that
many another had. Well, I finally went with him to his place--the old
Gid Himes house--an' him an' me an' Sam an' Groner had considerable
talk. They told me how they'd all been down an' saw Mr. Hardwick, and
how quare he spoke to 'em. 'Them mill fellers never offered me a dollar,
not a dollar,' says Rudd. An' I says to him, 'Good Lord, Dawson! Never
offered you money? For God's sake! Did you want to be paid fo