eat like you look, it'll take a barbecue bull to fill you.
Draw up a chair an' we'll give you what we've got."

"Horses first," said Ump, taking up a split basket.

"Suit yourself," said Roy; "there's nobody holdin' you, an' there's corn
in the crib, hay in the mow, an' oats in the entry."

Jud and I followed Ump out of the house, put the horses in the log
stable, pulled off the bridles and saddles, and crammed the racks with
the sweet-smelling clover hay. Then we brushed out the mangers and threw
in the white corn. When we were done we went swaggering back to the
house.

From threatened disaster we had come desperately ashore. Whence arises
the strange pride of him who by sheer accident slips through the fingers
of Destiny?

We ate our supper under the onslaughts of the tavern-keeper. Roy had a
mind to know why we hurried. He scented some reason skulking in the
background, and he beat across the field like a setter.

"You'll want to get out early," he said. "Men who swim cattle won't be
lettin' grass grow under their feet."

"Bright an' early," replied Ump.

"It appears like," continued Roy, "you mightn't have time enough to get
where you're goin'."

"Few of us have," replied Ump. "About the time a feller gits a good
start, somethin' breaks in him an' they nail him up in quarter oak."

"Life is short," murmured the tavern-keeper, retiring behind a platitude
as a skirmisher retires behind a stone.

Ump bent the prongs of the fork against his plate. "An' yit," he
soliloquised, "there is time enough for most of us to do things that we
ought to be hung for."

Roy withdrew to the fastnesses of the kitchen, re-formed his lines and
approached from another quarter. "If I was Mr. Ward," he opened, jerking
his thumb toward Ump, "I'd give it to you when you got in."

The hunchback poured out his coffee, held up the saucer with both hands
and blew away the heat. "What for?" he grunted, between the puffings.

"What for?" said Roy. "Lordy! man, you're about the most reckless
creature that ever set on hog leather."

"The devil you say!" said Ump.

"That's what I say," continued the tavern-keeper, waving his arm to add
fury to his bad declamation. "That's what I say. Suppose you'd got
little Quiller drownded?"

The hunchback seemed to consider this possibility with the gravity of
one pointed suddenly to some defect in his life. He replaced the saucer
on the table, locked his fingers and thrust his thumbs together.