The anger and the drink and perhaps the consciousness of being in the
wrong were all ablaze in the Major's eyes.

The two were alone; only the darkling shadows stood at tiptoe at the
open windows, and still the flushed sky sent down a pervasive glow from
above.

Hoxer swallowed hard, gulping down his own wrath and sense of injury.
"Major," he said blandly, trying a new deal, "I don't think you quite
understand me."

"Such a complicated proposition you are, to be sure!"

Hoxer disregarded the sarcasm, the contempt in the tone.

"I am not trying to rip up an old score, but you said at Winfield's
store--at the store--that I did not build the cross levee on the
surveyor's line; that I shortened it----"

"So you did."

"But as if I had shortened the levee for my own profit, when, as you
know, it was paid for by the pole----"

"You tax me with making a false impression?"

An extreme revulsion of expectation harassed Hoxer. He had always known
that Jeffrey was an exception to the general rule of the few large
land-owners in the community, who were wont to conserve and, in fact, to
deserve the pose of kindly patron as well as wealthy magnate. But even
Jeffrey, he thought, would not grudge a word to set a matter straight
that could cost him nothing and would mean much to the levee-contractor.
Though of large experience in levee-building, Hoxer was new to the
position of contractor, having been graduated into it, so to speak, from
the station of foreman of a construction-gang of Irishmen. He had hoped
for further employ in this neighborhood, in building private levees
that, in addition to the main levees along the banks of the Mississippi,
would aid riparian protection by turning off overflow from surcharged
bayous and encroaching lakes in the interior. But, unluckily,
the employer of the first enterprise he had essayed on his own
responsibility had declared that he had deviated from the line of
survey, usually essential to the validity of the construction, thereby
much shortening the work; and had made this statement at Winfield's
store--at the store!

Whatever was said at the store was as if proclaimed through the
resounding trump of fame. The store in a Mississippi neighborhood,
frequented by the surrounding planters, great and small, was the focus
of civilization, the dispenser of all the wares of the world, from a
spool of thread to a two-horse wagon, the post-office, in a manner the
club. Here, sooner or later,