"I'll fight him anyway, 'n' I reckon ef he don't die till I lay out in the
lorrel fer him, he'll live a long time. Ef a Stetson ever done sech
meanness as that I never heerd it."

Nother hev I," said the old man, with quick justice. " You air a
over-bearin' race, all o' ye, but I never knowed ye to be that mean.
Hit's all the wus fer ye thet ye air in sech doin's. I tell ye, Rome--

A faint cry rose above the drone of the millstones, and old Gabe
stopped with open lips to listen. The boy's face was pressed close
to the logs. A wet paddle had flashed into the sunlight from out
the bushes across the river. He could just see a canoe in the
shadows under them, and with quick suspicion his brain pictured
Jasper's horse hitched in the bushes, and Jasper stealing across the
river to waylay Rome. But the canoe moved slowly out of sight
downstream and toward the deep water, the paddler unseen, and
the boy looked around with a weak smile. Neither seemed to have
heard him. Rome was brooding, with his sullen face in his hands;
the old miller was busy with his own thoughts; and the boy turned
again to his watch.

Jasper did not come. Isom's eyes began to ache from the steady
gaze, and now and then he would drop them to the water swirling
beneath. A slow wind swayed the overhanging branches at the
mouth of the stream, and under them was an eddy. Escaping this,
the froth and bubbles raced out to the gleams beating the air from
the sunlit river. He saw one tiny fleet caught; a mass of yellow
scum bore down and, sweeping through bubbles and eddy, was
itself struck into fragments by something afloat. A tremulous