possum in a hole in
the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Caesar off and go
my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by."

"Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of
the wave of wrath. "Yes; and then you came straight down here and told
my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front,
clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran.
"If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't
be any more than you've earned!"

"By gravy! _I_ tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff? You show me the man
'at says I done any such low-down thing as that, and I'll frazzle a
fifty-dollar hawsswhip out on his ornery hide--I will, so. Say, boy; you
don't certain'y believe that o' me, do ye?"

"I don't want to believe it of you, Japhe," quavered Tom, as near to
tears as the pride of his eighteen years would sanction. "But somebody
saw and told, and made it a heap worse than it was." He leaned over the
top of the wall and put his face in the crook of his elbow, being
nothing better than a hurt child, for all his bigness.

"Well, now; I wouldn't let a little thing like that gravel me, if I was
you, Tom-Jeff," said Pettigrass, turned comforter. "Nan's a mighty
pretty gal, and you ort to be willin' to stand a little devilin' on her
account--more especially as you've--"

Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow.

"Don't you say it, Japhe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out.

"I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was
there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?"

"Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and
Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in
that hole."

"Who was the man?"

"I don't know. I didn't recognize any of them--they were too far off
when I saw them. And afterward, Nan wouldn't tell me."

"Did any of 'em see you and Nan?"

"I thought not. Nan was sitting on the flat rock where you stood and
looked into the cave, and when she began to whimper, I flung her over
into the leaves and ran with her to the hole."

"H'm," said Japheth. "When you find out who that feller is that Nan's
skeered of, you can lay your hand on the man that told Brother Silas on
you. But I wouldn't trouble about it none, if I was you. You've got a
long ways the best of him, whoever he is, and--"

But Tom had turned to go home, feeling his way by the wall b