not by a long sight!" ejaculated Jed, who had been
especially stung by the slur on his faithful gray. "Not much, it ain't
all! So, yer did it on puppose, did yer? I might have s'spicioned from
the fust thet you was at the bottom of this rascality. They ain't
anything happened in this town fur a long time past thet you ain't been
mixed up in.

"I'm mortal sure," he went on, haranguing his audience and warming up at
the story of his wrongs, "thet it was this young varmint thet painted my
hosses with red, white and blue stripes, last Fourth of July. I jess had
time to harness up to get to the train in time, when I found it out, and
I didn't have time to get the paint off before I started. And there was
the people in Main Street laffin' fit ter kill themselves, and the
loafers at the deepo askin' me why I didn't paint myself so as to match
the hosses. It took me nigh on two days before I could get it off, and
the hosses smelt of benzine fur more than a week. Ef I could a ketched
the feller what done it, I'd 'a' taken it out of his hide, but I never
had no sartin proof. Howsumever, I knowed pooty well in my own mind who
done it," and he glared vindictively at Teddy.

But Teddy had already done all the confessing he cared to do for one
day, and the author of Jed's unwilling Fourth of July display was still
to remain a mystery.

Far more important to Teddy than Jed's threats was the wrath of his
uncle, who stood looking at him with a severity before which Teddy's
eyes fell.

"And you mean to tell me," said Mr. Aaron Rushton slowly, "you have the
nerve to stand there and tell me that you actually aimed at that
horse--that you deliberately----"

"No, not deliberately, Uncle Aaron," interrupted Fred, who had been
trying to get in a word for his brother, and now seized this opening.
"He didn't think of what he was doing. If he had, he wouldn't have done
it. He didn't have any idea the horses would run away. Teddy wouldn't
hurt----"

"You keep still, Fred," and his uncle turned on him savagely. "When I
want your opinion, I'll ask you for it. If you weren't always making
excuses for him and trying to get him out of scrapes, he wouldn't get
into so many.

"Not another word," he went on, as Fred still tried to make things
easier for Teddy. "We'll finish this talk up at the house. I want your
father and mother to hear for themselves just how near this son of
theirs came to killing his uncle."

"I'll see if I can get a rig of