would, if I had one."

"No; not at all for you, Nan," he said half-absently. And then he
tramped away to the gate, and put a leg over Saladin, and rode down the
straggling street of the little settlement, again in the face and eyes
of all who cared to see.

The bay had measured less than a mile of the homeward way when there
came a clatter of hoof-beats in the rear. Tom awoke out of the absent
fit, spoke to Saladin and rode the faster. Nevertheless, the pursuing
horseman overtook him, and a drawling voice said:

"Hit's right smart wicked to shove the bay thataway down-hill, son."

Tom pulled his horse down to a walk. He was in no mood for
companionship, but he knew Pettigrass would refuse to be shaken off.

"Where have you been?" he asked sourly.

"Me? I been over to McLemore's Valley, lookin' at some brood-mares that
old man Mac is tryin' to sell the Major."

"Did you come through Pine Knob?"

"Shore, I did. I was a-settin' on Brother Bill Layne's porch whilst you
was talkin' to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o' pitiful you cayn't let that
pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff."

"That's enough," said Tom hotly. "I've heard all I'm going to about that
thing, from friends or enemies."

"I ain't no way shore about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was
'lottin' to say a few things, m'self."

Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track.

"There's the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or
the back half--whichever you like."

Japheth's answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take
either.

"You cayn't rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I've knowed you a heap too
long. Git in the fu'ther rut and take your medicine like a man."

Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion
again, and Japheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down.

"Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he
judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain't goin' to
tell no tales out o' school this here one time. But you got to let Nan
alone, d'ye hear?"

"Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I'll go where I please, and
do what I please. You seem to forget that I'm not a boy any longer!"

"Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other.
"But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff."

Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to
bend all means to the one end, the tr