sts together, had wholly lost his amiable smile. Something
primordial was going on, deep down in his rudimentary brain.

As for Eph Adamson, he also stood scowling and silent, a sudden wave of
resentment filling his soul at seeing the happiness of these two.

"No, you don't--just you leave him be!" called out Eph Adamson, as the
young man pushed the half-wit back from him, his own blue eyes now
beginning to glint. "Leave him alone, unless you want to fight. He can
lick you anyways, whoever you are. Do you want to fight?"

"No, why should I? I don't know you."

Don Lane turned toward the stranger, still frowning and somewhat
wondering, but in no terror whatever.

"I don't know you neither, nor what you're doin' here, but you've got to
fight or 'pologize," said Eph Adamson, arriving at this conclusion
through certain mental processes of his own not apparent. "You got to
have our consent to cross this here courtyard. This is my son John, and
you shan't insult him."

"Get on away--step back," said Don Lane. "I guess it's all right, but
let my mother and myself alone--we're just going home."

A sudden wave of rage and wonder, mingled, filled the soul of drunken
Eph Adamson as his venom rose to the boiling point.

"Mother!" he half screamed, "your _mother_? Who're you? You're a pretty
pair, you two, ain't you? She said her baby died twenty years ago. Did
she have some more? Who're you? _Mother?_--Say, after all, are _you_ the
town's boy--coming pushing past my son with her--your _mother_! What do
you mean? If you're her son, you ain't _got_ no mother, nor no father
neither."

And now there came a pause, an icy pause--icy it was, out there in the
glare of the hot summer sun. These four who stood in view of all the
village might have been statues for the time, so motionless, so tense
was each.

Not many actually heard the words of old Eph Adamson--words wrung out of
the bitterness of his own soul perhaps, but words intolerable none the
less. None had heard the words of Aurora Lane and the young man as they
had spoken previous to this. None guessed who the stranger was or might
be--none but drunken Eph Adamson. But all could see what now happened.

For one instant the young man stood almost like a statue. Then with one
sudden thrust of his fist he smote the old man full in the mouth, so
swift and hard a blow that Adamson dropped prostrate, and for the time
motionless.

A sudden, instantaneous, electric buzz, a murm