im time to cool off.
It'll be good fer 'im. He oughtn't to be so previous with his firearms."

"But paw was--they don't know--mebbe"--panted the girl brokenly.

"Yes, yes, M'lissy, I don't doubt yer paw was aggravatin'; but we don't
know, and we'd better not take sides. The young feller ain't nothin' to
us, an' yer paw was--well, he was yer _paw_, we've got to remember
that."

Lysander put his foot on the hub and mounted to the high seat,
gathering up the reins and putting on the brake. The mules started
forward, and then held back in a protesting way, and the wagon went
creaking and scraping through the sand down the mountain road.

VII.

In the days that passed wearisomely enough before the trial, Melissa
heard much that did not tend to soothe her harassed little soul.
Lysander, having taken refuge behind the assertion that it "wasn't
becomin' fer the fam'ly to take sides," bore his mother-in-law's
stinging sarcasms in virtuous silence.

"Seems to me it depends on which side you take," sneered the old woman.
"I don't see anything so very impullite in gettin' mad when yer pap's
shot down like a dog."

Lysander braced himself judicially.

"We don't none of us know nothin' about it," he contended. "If I'd 'a'
been there and 'a' seen the scrimmage, I'd 'a' knowed what to think. As
'tis, I dunno what to think, and there's no law that kin make you think
when you don't hev no fax to base your thinkun' on."

"Some folks lacks other things besides fax to base their thinkun' on,"
the old woman jerked out sententiously.

Lysander pressed the tobacco into his cob pipe, and scratched a match on
the sole of his boot.

"I think they've been middlin' fair," he said, between puffs, "fixin' up
that water business. It's my opinion the young feller's at the bottom of
it,--they say his father's well off; 't enny rate, it's _fixed_, an'
you're better off 'n you wuz,--exceptin', uv course, your affliction,
an' that can't be helped." The man composed his voice very much as he
would have straightened a corpse in which he had no personal interest.
"I'm in fer shuttin' up."

"They don't seem to want you to shut up," fretted his mother-in-law.
"They've s'peenied _you_."

"They're welcome to all I know; 'tain't much, an' 't won't help nor
hender, as I c'n see, but such as it is, they kin hev it an' welcome."

Lysander stood in the doorway, with his hat on the back of his head. He
tilted it over his eyes, as he made this avowal