'em Mary Ware favors? If
she favors either of 'em, and trouble comes, it'll mix her in."

"Hope Abner gits him. Better for her, says I, to take up with a man like
Ab, that's a good feller fifty weeks out of the year, and goes on a tear
two weeks, than to be married to a cuss like Asa that jest goes along
sort of gloomy and _still_ and seekin'. I hain't never heard Asa laugh
with no real enjoyment into it yet. He grins and shows his teeth. He's
too dum quiet, and always acts like a feller that's afraid you'll find
out what he's got in mind."

"Um!..." said Scattergood.

"Mary's about the pertiest girl in Coldriver," said Pliny. "Dunno but
what she could handle Abner all right, too. Call to mind the firemen's
picnic last year when she went with Abner, and he busted loose on that
feller with the three shells and the leetle ball?"

"When the feller had robbed Half-wit Stenens of nigh on to twenty
dollars? I call to mind."

"Abner was jest on the p'int of separatin' that feller into chunks and
dispersin' the chunks over the county when Mary she steps up and puts
her hand en his arm, and says, 'Abner!' ... Jest like that she said it,
quiet and gentle, but firm. Abner he let loose of the feller and turned
to look at her, and in a minute all the fight went out of his face and
his eyes like somebody had drained it off. He kind of blushed and hung
his head, and walked away with her.... She didn't tongue-lash him,
neither, jest kept a-touchin' his arm so's he wouldn't forgit she was
there."

"Um!..." said Scattergood. "Here comes Asa." He lifted himself from his
creaking chair and started across the bridge. "If it's a-comin' off," he
said to Pliny, "I want to git where I kin git a good view."

In the post office the twin brothers came face to face. Scattergood saw
Abner's thin lips twist in a provocative sneer. Abner halted suddenly,
at arm's length from his brother, and eyed him from head to foot, and
Asa returned an insolent stare.

"You sneakin' hound," said Abner, without heat, as was his way in the
beginning, always. "You're lower'n I thought, and I thought you was
low." Scattergood took in these words and pondered them. Did they mean
some new cause for enmity between the brothers? Suddenly Abner's eyes
began to kindle and to blaze. Asa crouched and his teeth showed in a
saturnine, crooked smile. No man could look upon him and accuse him of
being afraid of Abner or of avoiding the issue.

"I know what you've been