at for a few minutes in silence, both keeping their hands
spread out over the money.

"Whut you gwine do wid yo' twelve dollars an' fo' bits?" Pearline
demanded at last.

"I figgers on buyin' a fiddle," Plaster told her. "Plenty money kin be
made playin' fiddles, an' I b'lieves I could learn to fiddle ef I had a
good chance."

"I ain't gwine hab no fiddlin' nigger in my house," Pearline snorted.
"I's druther be married to a phoneygraft."

"You ain't gwine be married to nothin' very long ef you don't leggo dis
money, nigger!" Plaster snarled.

"I is."

"You ain't."

"Don't gimme no sass."

"You sassed me fust."

The woman raised one hand from the money and made an unexpected
sideswipe at Plaster's jaw with her open palm. The blow landed with a
smack that jarred the very marrow of his bones and keeled him over the
edge of the porch to the ground. As he fell sprawling, the chain
tightened and jerked Pearline off her perch and she fell to the ground
with a squall. Then for ten minutes there was a Kilkenny cat scrap on
the front lawn.

Pearline bit and scratched and pulled hair and tore clothes. She had
decidedly the best of the rookus until her unusual activities caused her
to get a twist of the chain around her neck. Plaster thanked the Lord
and choked her into inaction and submission by the simple process of
pretending to escape from her and thus tightening the chain.

When she was choked almost to suffocation, he edged her to the porch,
lifted the twenty-five dollars and thirty cents into his own pockets,
and released the chain.

[Illustration: "THE BLOW LANDED WITH A SMACK THAT JARRED THE VERY MARROW
OF HIS BONES AND KEELED HIM OVER THE EDGE OF THE PORCH TO THE GROUND."]

When Pearline recovered her breath she dropped flat upon the ground at
her feet and howled like a Comanche until the going down of the sun.

Plaster did not attempt to console or quiet her. When he spoke again, he
reached out and touched the bawling woman with his foot.

"Git up idjit!" he exclaimed. "Marse John expecks us to come an' repote
to him an' git dese here handcuffs tuck off."

Sheriff John Flournoy was waiting for them as they came across his lawn
to the porch where he sat.

Then for half an hour he listened to a tirade of crimination and
recrimination which crackled with profane expletives like thorns under a
pot. When Plaster paused to breathe, Pearline took up the complaint.
When Pearline stopped from exhaustion, Pl