' ter die suddent-like,
without tellin' us what we needed ter know. Will ye give us them facts
thet we're askin' fer--or won't ye?"

"I won't," said Maggard, shortly. "I stand ter be jedged by ther way I
demeans myself--an' I don't suffer no man ter badger me with questions
like es ef I war some criminal in ther jail-house."

The grotesque face of the hunchback hardened to the stony antagonism of
an issue joined. His dwarfed and twisted body seemed to loom taller and
more shapely as if the power of the imprisoned spirit were expanding its
ugly shell from within, and an undeniable dignity showed itself
flashingly through the caricatured features.

Back of him, his silent colleagues stiffened, too, and though they were
all tall men, with eyes flaming in unspoken wrath, they seemed smaller
in everything but bodily stature than he.

After a brief pause, Hump Doane wheeled and addressed himself to his
companions. "I reckon thet's all, men," he said, briefly, and Cal
Maggard recognized that the silence with which they turned away from him
was more ominous than if they had berated him.

Yet before he reached the stile Doane halted and stood irresolute with
his gaze groundward and his chin on his breast, then summoning his
fellows with a jerk of the thumb, he turned back to the spot where Cal
Maggard had remained unmoving at the base of the great tree, and his
face though still solemn was no longer wrathful.

"Sometimes, Mr. Thornton," he said with a slow weighing of his words,
"men thet aims at accord fails ter comprehend each other--an' gits ther
seemin' of cavillin'. Mebby we kinderly got off on ther wrong foot an' I
kain't go away from hyar satisfied without I'm plum sartain thet ye
onderstands me aright."

Maggard had learned to read the type of human features and human contact
clearly enough to place this man in his rightful page and column of
life. He recognized an honesty and sincerity that might be trusted under
the test of torture itself, purposes undeviatingly true--and the narrow
intensity of fanaticism. He would have liked to make an ally of this
man, and a friend, yet the question that had been raised could not be
answered.

"I hain't only willin' but plum anxious ter hear all ye've got ter say,
Mr. Doane," he made serious reply, and the other after a judicial pause
went on:

"Hit hain't no light an' frivolous sperit of meddlin' thet brings me
hyar askin' ye questions thet seems imp'dent an' nosy. Hit's