irrelevantly asseverated, "an'
I never war. An' when Eveliny axed me how I'd hev liked ter hev another
'oman take Abs'lom whenst he war a baby, I couldn't hold out no longer."

"Shucks!" cried Absalom, unfilially; "ye'd aheap better be a-studyin'
'bout'n my good now 'n whenst I war a baby--a-givin' away _my_ child ter
them Quimbeys; a-h'istin' him out'n the winder!"

She was glad to retort that he was "impident," and to take refuge in an
aggrieved silence, as many another mother has done when outmatched by
logic.

After this there was more cheerfulness in her hidden face than might
have been argued from her port of important sorrow. "Bes' ter hev
no jawin', though," she said to herself, as she sat thus inscrutably
veiled. And deep in her repentant heart she was contradictorily glad
that Evelina and the baby were safe together down in the Cove.

*****

Old Joel Quimbey, putting on his spectacles, with a look of keenest
curiosity, to read a paper which the deputy-sheriff of the county
presented when he drew rein by the wood-pile one afternoon some three
weeks later, had some difficulty in identifying a certain Elnathan
Daniel Kittredge specified therein. He took off his spectacles, rubbed
them smartly, and put them on again. The writing was unchanged. Surely
it must mean the baby. That was the only Kittredge whose body they could
be summoned to produce on the 24th of December before the judge of the
circuit court, now in session. He turned the paper about and looked at
it, his natural interest as a man augmented by his recognition as an
ex-magistrate of its high important legal character.

"Eveliny," he quavered, at once flattered and furious, "dad-burned ef
Abs'lom hain't gone an' got out a _habeas corpus_ fur the baby!"

The phrase had a sound so deadly that there was much ado to
satisfactorily explain the writ and its functions to Evelina, who
had felt at ease again since the baby was at home, and so effectually
guarded that to kidnap him was necessarily to murder two or three of the
vigilant and stalwart Quimbey men. So much joy did it afford the old
man to air his learning and consult his code--a relic of his
justiceship--that he belittled the danger of losing the said Elnathan
Daniel Kittredge in the interest with which he looked forward to the day
for him to be produced before the court.

There was a gathering of the clans on that day. Quimbeys and Kittredges
who had not visited the town for twenty years w