rwood; but the words
he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she
might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping
did not deter the girl.

She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!

The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools
and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and
hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the
rumble of a great church-organ.

Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find
a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in
her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see
the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a
broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the
roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr.
Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry.

It was he who had said: "I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood
git his."

There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking
old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the
other side of the buggy.

"I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in
no land squabble. I ain't for neither side."

It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered
Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old
lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the
argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.

Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as
above. "Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll
side with me," he said.

"We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side
with nobody," grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.

"S-s!" hissed Raffer. "Come here!"

Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. "You see your way to
goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it,
Tobe."

"Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose," grunted the old lumberman, and
Nan approved very much of him just then.

"Bah!" exclaimed Raffer.

"Bah, yourself!" Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. "I got some
decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man,
Ged Raffer!"

"Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?" demanded the eager
Raffer.

"That