no respec' fur no other man's say-so. An' he
talks 'bout _his_ oath ez ef he war the only man in Tennessee ez ever
war swore on the 'Holy Evangelists o' Almighty Gawd' in the
court-house. He fairly stamped on my feelin's, in that Jenkins case,
ter make me agree with him; but I couldn't agree, an' it hung the
jury, ez they say. I wisht they hed hung the foreman! By Hokey, I
despise a hard-headed, 'pinionated man."

"Look at his back," rejoined Jeremiah Sayres, a man of theory, who had
a light undecided tint of hair and beard and scraggy mustache, and a
blond complexion burned a permanent solid red by the summer sun. "I'd
know his dispositions by his back." He waved his hand at the brown
jeans coat that draped a spare and angular but singularly erect back,
which scarcely seemed to move in response to the motions of the mare
pacing briskly along. "What sorter back is that fur a man risin' fifty
year old?--straight ez a ramrod, an' ez stiff. But, Silas, ef ever ye
git the better o' him, ye hev got ter break it."

"I hearn his third wife married him ter git rid o' him," put in Peter
Sims, given to gossip. "She 'lowed he warn't nigh so tarrifyin' 'roun'
his own house, a-feedin' the peegs, an' ploughin' an' cuttin' wood,
an' sech, _occupied somehows_, ez he war a-settin' up in his Sunday
best at her house, with nuthin' ter do, allowin' she _hed_ ter marry
him, whether or not, 'kase he wouldn't hev 'No' fur a answer."

"An' look at it now!" exclaimed Silas Boyd, unexpectedly reinforced by
the matrimonial phase of the question. "That thar man hev bodaciously
argued an' contradicted two wimmin out'n this vale o' tears. An'
everybody knows it takes a power o' contradiction to out-do a woman.
He oughter be indicted for cold-blooded murder! That's what!" He
nodded vindictively at the straight jeans-clad back in advance of him.

Over and again the party called a halt, to push about in search of a
practicable seven-foot passage amongst crags and chasms, and to
contend with the various insistence touching devious ways preferred by
the honorary attendants, who often seemed to forget that they
themselves were not in the exercise of a delegated jury duty. Tangles
impeded, doubts beset them, although the axe by which the desired
route had been blazed out aforetime by the petitioners had been
zealous and active; but the part of a pioneer in a primeval wilderness
is indeed the threading of a clueless labyrinth, and both sun and
compass