ected to sit with the
elders that night, and obstinately held his place before the hearthstone
in the cabin room. Jephthah Turrentine's sons were none of them
particularly satisfactory to their progenitor. A man of brains, a
creature to whom an argument was ever more than the mere material thing
argued about, these male offspring, who took their traits naturally after
the spindle side, vexed him with resemblance to their handsome,
high-tempered, brainless mother. But Jim Cal was worse than a bore to his
father; the old fellow regarded a son who weighed above two hundred
pounds as a disgrace. And to-night the fact that the door of his room
commanded a sidelong view of the tables which were being spread, and
about which Iley circled and scolded, furnished so fair a reason for
James Calhoun's selection of it as an anchorage that his father was the
more offended.

"You thar, Unc' Jep?" sounded Blatchley Turrentine's careless voice from
the dark.

"I make out to be," returned his uncle lazily.

Blatchley came into the circle of dim light about the door, Andy and Jeff
at his shoulder. Wade followed a moment later.

"Why ain't you-all boys down thar whar the gals is at, playin'?" inquired
Jim Cal fretfully. "Looks like to me ef I was a young feller an' not
wedded I wouldn't hang around whar the old men was."

"Is Creed Bonbright comin' over here to-night?" inquired Andy abruptly,
in obedience apparently to a nudge from Blatch.

"I reckon he is," observed the old man dispassionately. "Jude has purty
well bidden the whole top of the mountain."

"Is Pone Cyard comin'?" put in Jeff. The twins usually spoke alternately,
the sum of their conversation counting thus for one.

"That I can't say," returned the old man with mildly ironic emphasis.
"Mebbe him and the chaps and the lame rooster--_and_ Nancy--will come
along at the tail of the procession."

"Well," persisted Andy, breaking a somewhat lengthened silence in which
all the newcomers stood, and through which their breathing could be
distinctly heard, "well I think Creed Bonbright has got the impudence! He
come to the jail, whar me and Jeff was at, an' he had some talk with us,
an' I let him know my mind. He stood in with that marshal--I know it--and
so does Jeff. Pone Cyard got out quicker becaze Bonbright tipped the
marshal the wink; but I don't hold with him nor his doin's."

The parent of the twins regarded them both with sardonic black eyes half
shut. "_You_ don'