"Hit don't do much else since he's took with the lumbago,"
answered Balaam somewhat obscurely.

"How are the squire, Charley?" asked Yancy with grave concern.

"Only just tolerable, Bob."

"What did he tell you to do?" and Yancy knit his brows.

"Seems like he wanted me to find out what you'd do. He
recommended I shouldn't use no violence."

"I wouldn't recommend you did, either," assented Yancy, but
without heat.

"I'd get shut of this here law business, Bob," advised Uncle
Sammy.

"Suppose I come to the Cross Roads this evening?"

"That's agreeable," said the deputy, who presently departed in
company with Carrington.

Some hours later the male population of Scratch Hill, with a
gravity befitting the occasion, prepared itself to descend on the
Cross Roads and give its support to Mr. Yancy in his hour of
need. To this end those respectable householders armed
themselves, with the idea that it might perhaps be necessary to
correct some miscarriage of justice. They were shy enough and
timid enough, these remote dwellers in the pine woods, but, like