sartain of
nuthin'. Sometimes I thinks a heap of Jerry, but more times Jack
Halloway seems ter pintedly sot me on fire."

Jerry was tramping along the high-road, whistling an old ballad of
lugubrious tune when a sharp turn brought him face to face with Jase
Mallows. Jerry himself was for passing on with a brief salutation, but
the other halted him and fell into voluble talk.

Jase complained that his wound had left certain after-effects which
still gave him trouble.

"Hit's hell ter pay, when a law-abidin' man kain't travel ther highway
withouten he's shot down like I was thet night," lamented Mallows
virtuously. "I misdoubts ef I ever feels plum right inside me ergin.
I wisht I knowed who thet feller war."

"Mebby he mistook ye fer somebody else," suggested Jerry. "Thet war
ther same night them highwaymen sought ter lay-way Alexander--thar war
right smart shootin' goin' on hyar an' thar."

"Did ye ever gain any knowledge of who them fellers war?" Mallows
sought to couch his question in the manner of interest for the wrongs
of another, but just a shade too much eagerness on his own part marred
the effect.

Jerry smiled. He had caught that note and it piqued his curiosity, so
with mountain secretiveness he became cryptic in his response. "Wa'al,
mebby we hain't tellin' all we knows--jest yit. Mebby we're kinderly
bidin' our time for a leetle spell."

It was not a comprehensive announcement. It was nine-tenths inspired
by a spirit of teasing gossip-hunger into fuller revealment, but it
happened to start a train of serious thought in the hearer.

Jase had recently returned from Coal City, and there he had talked with
men who were watching with alarm the possibilities of an impending
trial. The man who had shot his neighbor over a fence-line dispute was
to face his prosecutors at the next term of court, and if he talked too
much, large and portentous results might ensue.

The Commonwealth would know nothing of its potential leverage on the
accused unless Halloway, O'Keefe or Alexander broke silence, and it
followed that their silencing was highly important.

Through Jase's thoughts ran, in a threatening refrain, the words,
"Mebby hit won't be long now."

So Jase saddled his mule that evening, despite the misery which was the
relic of his wounding and started back to Coal City to convene a
committee of ways and means.

CHAPTER XVII

The mail came irregularly to Shoulder-blade creek, but eve