overhung Birt, he could not have been so merry, so facetious, so
queerly and quaintly bad as he was on his visits to the tanyard,
which were peculiarly frequent just now. If Birt had had the heart
for it, he might have enjoyed some of Rufe's pranks at the expense
of Andy Byers. The man had once found a sort of entertainment in
making fun of Rufe, and this had encouraged the small boy to
retaliate as best he could.

At this time, however, Byers suddenly became the gravest of men. He
took little notice of the wiles of his elfish antagonist, and
whenever he fell into a snare devised by Rufe, he was irritable for
a moment, and had forgotten it the next. He had never a word or
glance for Birt, who marveled at his conduct. He seemed perpetually
brooding upon some perplexity. Occasionally in the midst of his
work he would stand motionless for five minutes, the two-handled
knife poised in his grasp, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his
shaggy brows heavily knitted, his expression doubting, anxious.

The tanner commented upon this inactivity, one day. "Hev ye tuk
root thar, Andy?" he asked.

Byers roused himself with a start. "Naw," he replied reflectively,
"but I hev been troubled in my mind some, lately, an' I gits ter
studyin' powerful wunst in a while."

As he bent to his work, scraping the two-handled knife up and down
the hide stretched over the wooden horse, he added, "I hev got so ez
I can't relish my vittles sca'cely, bein' so tormented in my mind,
an' my sleep air plumb broke up; 'pears like ter me ez I hev got a
reg'lar gift fur the nightmare."