ther considered stitch.

"I don't know where it is," he answered without looking up.

The questioning of Susan's glance became accusative.

"It's there beside you on the meal sack," she said. "Throw it to him."

Leff raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were curiously pale and
wide. She could see the white round the fixed pupil.

"Do it yourself," he answered, his tone the lowest that could reach her.
"Do it or go to Hell."

She rested without movement, her mouth falling slightly open. For the
moment there was a stoppage of all feeling but amazement, which invaded
her till she seemed to hold nothing else. David's voice came from a far
distance, as if she had floated away from him and it was a cord jerking
her back to her accustomed place.

"Hurry up," it called. "It's right there beside you."

Leff threw down his sewing and leaped to his feet. Leaning against the
bank behind him was his gun, newly cleaned and primed.

"Get it yourself and be d--d to you!" he roared.

The machinery of action stopped as though by the breaking of a spring.
Their watches ticked off a few seconds of mind paralysis in which there
was no expectancy or motive power, all action inhibited. Sight was all
they used for those seconds. Leff spoke first, the only one among them
whose thinking process had not been snapped:

"If you keep on shouting for me to do your errands, I'll show you"--he
snatched up the gun and brought it to his shoulder with a lightning
movement--"I'll send you where you can't order me round--you and this
d--d ------ here."

The inhibition was lifted and the three men rushed toward him. Daddy
John struck up the gun barrel with a tent pole. The charge passed over
David's head, spat in the water beyond, the report crackling sharp in the
narrow ravine. David staggered, the projection of smoke reaching out
toward him, his hands raised to ward it off, not knowing whether he was
hurt or not.

"That's a great thing to do," he cried, dazed, and stubbing his foot on a
stone stumbled to his knees.

The two others fell on Leff. Susan saw the gun ground into the dust
under their trampling feet and Leff go down on top of it. Daddy John's
tent pole battered at him, and Courant on him, a writhing body, grappled
and wrung at his throat. The doctor came running from the trees, the
hammer in his hand, and Susan grabbed at the descending pole, screaming:

"You're killing him. Father, stop them. They'll murd