didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not but that he got well again—that is, partly. And she appeared to have different ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of me, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come back and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she acts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way myself." And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire.

"I don't see either end of it," says I. "You're a bad one, Jim, a downright bad one."

"That's so. It's Jeaney you mean," he says, looking kind of interested. "It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?"

The wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear each other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know how to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something whimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.

My opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and that's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might be the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which seemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see rightly what it would mean if I said it.

Jim got up and stretched his legs. "Now, I tell you, Fargus," says he, "I'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman, not to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will give us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me, there's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me mine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort, why, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a hand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad. Now, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man could be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe you wouldn't mind if you had."

"Speaking generally," says I, "you're about right, Jim."

With that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the storm.

Next day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and the valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking toward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow up there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family for the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping rocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed through Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in Jim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the Hawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she being down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of getting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.

About four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started over to tell Jim he'd better get out; and sudden I stops and looks, for there was a crowd coming from Canada Center—the Storrses and the Petersons and the Merimys, and the extra woman in a buggy with Henry Hall, who was county sheriff then. "Well, 'Mighty!" says I.

They pulled up in front of Jim's place, and I took it they were going to walk in and settle things prompt. But you see, when I got there, it was Jim a-standing by his door with his rifle, and the sheriff and Canada Center was squeezing themselves through the gate and Jim shooting off sideways at the pickets on his fence. And the sheriff ups and yelled:

"Here, you Jim Hawks! That ain't any way to do."

Then Jim walks down the road with his rifle over his arm, and Jeaney Merimy comes to the door. She looked some mad and some crying, a little of both.

"Hall," says he, "you turn your horse and go back where you come from. Maybe I'll see you by and by. The rest of you go back to Canada Center, and if Jeaney wants anything of you she'll come and say so. You go, now!"

And they went. The extra woman drove off with the sheriff, hanging her head, and the sheriff saying, "You'll have to come to time, Jim Hawks, soon or late." Jeaney Merimy sat in the door with her head hung down, too; and the only one as ought to have been ashamed, he was walking around uppish, like he meant to call down Tioba for throwing rocks into his yard. Then Jeaney sees me, and she says:

"You're all down on Jim. There's no one but me to stand up for Jim."

She began to cry, while Jim cocked his head and looked at her curious. And she kept saying, "There's no one but me to stand up for Jim."

That was a queer way for her to look at it.

Now, that night set in, like the one before, with a drizzling rain. It was the longest wet weather I ever knew. I kept going to the window to look at the light over at the Hawkses' and wonder what would come of it, till it made my wife nervous, and she's apt to be sharp when she's nervous, so I quit. And the way Tioba talked double that night was terrible—um-hiss, toot-toot, hour after hour; and no sleep for me and my wife, being nervous.

I do' know what time it was, or what we heard. All I know is, my wife jumps up with a yell, and I jumps up too, and I know we were terrible afraid and stood listening maybe a minute. It seemed like there was almost dead silence in the night, only the um-m went on, but no hissing and no tooting, and if there was any sound of the rain or wind I don't recollect it. And then, "Um!" says Tioba, louder and louder and louder! till there was no top nor bottom to it, and the whole infernal world went to pieces, and pitched me and my wife flat on the floor.

The first I knew, there was dead silence again; or maybe my hearing was upset, for soon after I began to hear the rain buzzing away quietly. Then I got up and took a lantern, and my wife grabs me.

"You ain't going a step!" says she, and the upshot was we both went, two old folks that was badly scared and bound to find out why. We went along the road, looking about us cautious; and of a sudden, where the road ought to be, we ran into a bank of mud that went up out of seeing in the night. Then my wife sat down square in the road and began a-crying, and I knew Tioba had fallen down.

Now, there's Tioba, and that's how she looked next morning, only worse—more mushy and generally clawed up, with the rain still falling dismal, and running little gullies in the mud like a million snakes.

According to my guess, Jim and Jeaney and the cemetery were about ten rods in, or maybe not more than eight. Anyway, I says to Peterson, and he agreed with me, that there wasn't any use for a funeral. I says: "God A'mighty buried 'em to suit himself." It looked like he didn't think much of the way Canada Center did its burying, seeing the cemetery was took in and buried over again. Peterson and me thought the same on that point. And we put up the white stone, sort of on top of things, that maybe you've noticed, and lumped the folk in the cemetery together, and put their names on it, and a general epitaph; but not being strong on the dates, we left them out mostly. We put Jeaney Merimy with her family, but Canada Center was singularly united against letting Jim in.

"You puts his name on no stone with me or mine," says Merimy, and I'm not saying but what he was right. Yes, sir; Merimy had feelings, naturally. But it seemed to me when a man was a hundred and fifty feet underground, more or less, there ought to be some charity; and maybe I had a weakness for Jim, though my wife wouldn't hear of him, on account of his drinks, which were slippery things. Anyway, I takes a chisel and a mallet, and I picks out a boulder on the slide a decent ways from Canada Center's monument, and I cuts in it, "Jim Hawks"; and then I cuts in it an epitaph that I made myself, and it's there yet:

HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.

HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.