. She dressed a twig from the pile of wood
in a gay scrap of cloth, casting glances the while at the little girl,
and handed it to her.

"I hain't never seen ez good a baby ez this," she said, with the
convincing coercive mendacity of a grandmother.

The little girl accepted it humbly; it was a good baby doubtless of its
sort, but it was not alive, which could not be denied of the Grinnell
baby, Grinnell though it was.

"An' Job Grinnell he kem down ter the fence, an' 'lowed he'd slit our
ears, an' named us shoats," continued her brother. Purdee lifted his
head. "An' sent a word ter dad," said the boy, tremulously.

[Illustration: What word did he send ter me? 367]

"What word did he send ter--_me?_" cried Purdee.

The boy quailed to tell him. "He tole me ter ax ye ef ye ever read sech
ez this on Moses' tables in the mountings--' An' ye shell claim sech ez
be yer own, an' yer neighbors' belongings shell ye in no wise boastfully
medjure fur yourn, nor look upon it fur covetiousness, nor yit git a big
name up in the kentry fur ownin' sech ez be another's,'" faltered the
sturdy Abner.

The next moment he felt an infinite relief. He suddenly recognized the
fact that he had been chiefly restrained from repeating the words by
an unrealized terror lest they prove true--lest something his father
claimed was not his, indeed.

But the expression of anger on Purdee's face was merged first in
blank astonishment, then in perplexed cogitation, then in renewed and
overpowering amazement.

The wife turned from the warping-bars with a vague stare of surprise,
one hand poised uncertainly upon a peg of the frame, the other holding
a hank of "spun truck." The grandmother looked over her spectacles with
eyes sharp enough to seem subsidized to see through the mystery.

"In the name o' reason and religion, Roger Purdee," she adjured him,
"what air that thar perverted Philistine talkin' 'bout?"

"It air more'n I kin jedge of," said Purdee, still vainly cogitating.

He sat for a time silent, his dark eyes bent on the fire, his broad,
high forehead covered by his hat pulled down over it, his long, tangled,
dark locks hanging on his collar.

Suddenly he rose, took down his gun, and started toward the door.

"Roger," cried his wife, shrilly, "I'd leave the critter be. Lord knows
thar's been enough blood spilt an' good shelter burned along o' them
Purdees' an' Grinnells' quar'ls in times gone. Laws-a-massy!"--she wrung
her hands, a