er standing on the threshold, leaning on his rifle, a
brace of wild turkeys hanging over his shoulders, half a dozen rabbits
dangling from his belt, stared at her through the dull, red glow of the
fading fire in amazed agitation.

"What did he level, Medory--a gun?"

"Wuss'n that!" replied the younger woman. "He leveled the weepon o' the
law!"

The man turned to look again at the curious disarray of the room. "The
law don't allow him to do sech ez this!" he blurted out in rising
anger. "Why, everything hyar is bodaciously broke an' busted! War it the
sheriff himself ez levied?"

"'Twar jes' the dep'ty critter, Clem Tweed," explained Medora, "mighty
joki-fied, an' he 'peared ter be middlin' drunk, an' though he said
su'thin' 'bout exemptions he 'lowed ez we-uns lived at the eend o' the
world."

Her mother-in-law suddenly lowered the apron from her face.

"'The jumpin'-off place,' war what Clem Tweed called it!" she
interpolated with a fiery eye of indignant reminiscence.

"He did! He did!" Medora bitterly resented this fling at the remoteness
of their poor home. "An' he said whilst hyar he'd level on everything
in sight, ez he hoped never ter travel sech roads agin--everything in
sight, even the baby an' the cat!"

"Shucks, Medory, ye know the dep'ty man war funnin' whenst he said that
about the baby an' the cat! Ye know ez Clem admitted he hed Christmas in
his bones!" the elder objected.

"Waal, war Clem Tweed funnin' whenst he done sech ez that, in levyin' an
execution?" Bruce Gilhooley pointed with his ramrod at the wreck of the
furniture.

The two women burst into lugubrious sobs and rocked themselves back and
forth in unison. "'Twar _Dad!_" Medora moaned, in smothered accents.

A pause of bewilderment ensued. Then the young man's face took on an
expression of dismay so ominous that Medora's tears were checked in
the ghastly fear of disasters yet to come to her father-in-law. Now
and again she glanced anxiously over her shoulder at an oblong black
aperture in the dusk which betokened the open door of the shed-room.
Some one lurked there, evidently cherishing all aloof a grief, an anger,
a despair too poignant to share.

"Dad warn't hyar whenst the dep'ty leveled," she said. "An' mighty glad
we war--kase somebody mought hev got hurt. But whenst Dad kem home an'
larnt the news he jes'--he jes'--he jes' lept about like a painter."

"He did! He did!" asseverated a voice from the veiled head, all muffled