to
the eyes of the dog, he slowly moved toward the door. Then, making a
sudden motion forward, he sprang to one side; and the dog was in the
air, and when he came down the old man was upon his back, with hands
grasped around his throat. The women shrieked. Jim and Tom sprang
forward. "Look out, boys, don't let him scratch you. Here, Jim, grab his
hind legs. Mr. Elliott, fetch that handspike from over thar in the
corner."

Jim seized the dog's legs and Tom brought the big stick. "Shall I mash
his head with it, sir?"

"No. Put it across his neck and then I'll b'ar down on one end an' you
on the other an' with a twist Jim kin break his neck. Thar, we air
gittin' him." At the proper moment Jim gave the dog an upward twist and
there was a snap. They heard his neck break.

"It's all right," said Old Jasper. "Why, you women folks mustn't take on
now. Thar are two times when you mustn't take on--when thar's danger and
when thar ain't."

"I know he's pizened!" Margaret cried.

"Well, now, don't bet no money on that fur you'll lose it. He didn't
tech me."

"Let us thank the Lord," said Jim.

"All right," Jasper replied; "but thar ain't no hurry; the dog's dead."

CHAPTER VII.

NOT SO FAR OUT OF THE WORLD.

Men with guns came down the road, shouting "mad dog." The cry was taken
up and it echoed among the hills. In barbaric Europe, when every village
was a principality unto itself, the cry at midnight, summoning men from
their beds to butcher or be butchered, could not have been more
startling than the noon-tide cry of "mad dog" in rural Tennessee.
Mothers seized their children, fathers caught up guns and axes. The
cross-roads merchant slammed his door and locked it. Oxen, catching the
alarm, bellowed in the fields.

Starbuck went out into the road to meet the men. "Say," he said, in
answer to their shout, "if you air lookin' for a mad dog I kin let you
have one cheap. He's round thar."

The dog was dragged away and the community returned to the allegiance
which it owed to quietude and laziness; the shiftless lout loitered
along the road, and the old woman, on the gray mare, followed by the
fuzzy mule colt, carried down to the "commercial emporium," "a settin'
o' goose aigs" to be swopped for a handful of coffee and a lump of brown
sugar.

"Ma'm," said Starbuck to Mrs. Mayfield, as he went back into the house,
"you see that we don't live so fur outen the world atter all. Of co'se
thar air places that have