"I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to snatch up a
person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one
is a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice
little fellow. Where'd Chick go?"

"He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our
shootin'?"

"Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin'
clear to tell. Who do you think done it?"

Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair,
with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to
launch forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with
many a flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was
freed from those bonds of restraint that embarrassed his utterance
when in more formal society. The amount of profanity that he could
dispose of in the course of an ordinary conversation was little short
of astounding. This being more than an ordinary conversation and his
mood being mellow, called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set
forth the facts in the case, then gave his imagination full sway in
accounting for them. He interpreted the whole affair as a clash
between capital and labor, a conflict between the pampered aristocrat
and the common man. The shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan:
Dillingham and Morley had met by appointment, moved by what motive he
did not make clear, to kill Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't
the one on horseback, that they say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the
crossing, on the very afternoon of the shooting, and engaged him in
conversation? Phineas assured his listeners that he trembled even now
when he thought of the danger he had been in!